Just enough city planning

The hard question is what's just enough, "lagom" in Swedish.

The answer is 42

Why a model railway?

I want something different to my work. I want to create something physical with my hands, mostly during winter time. Summer is garden time. No pressure of being ready in time, or taking care of everyday chores.

Back to planning

I learned the hard way that space, time and cost are limitations you need to take care of, even in the city planning of a fictional town.

The most critical factor is space, as the maximum size I can accommodate is of the size of a plywood board, 240 x 120 cm or 4 by 8 feet.

Remember technical debt?

I don't want to pay much for new stuff, or scrap what I already have bought. Worst case scenario, there is a huge second-hand market were I can sell without to much loss.

In hindsight, I should probably gone for a smaller scale, but this is something very hard to change halfway though a layout. The same issue with choice of two-rail and three-rail system. Once selected, difficult to do anything about.

If you begin with Märklin H0, you are stuck with the german brand. With 2-rail systems, not so much.

Measure twice, cut once

Time is limited, so I need to avoid to build too much that needs to rebuild later. Re-build also add cost.

Digital chores

An additional complexity is digitalization of the model railroad. You have many options to chose from, and they impact your layout and cost. Is it also dependent on your choice of brand. Not easy to understand how it works in practice for me, even if I have a background with PLC and SCADA-systems.

Is this enough?

Often no.

You should decide what era, timeframe you want your layout to have. Railroads have been around for 200 years and trains and track layout have changed during this time. To understand this, we need to step back and think about the purpose with railroads. E.g. transport of goods and passengers between different locations, often with stations and yards.

If you prioritize landscape before running trains like Dawn with her Ladykillers layout this is even more important, as both landscape and rolling stock differs between countries. Your layout can also be smaller compared to if you prioritize running trains that often need more space. The difference choices we do impact the other decisions.

We also need to assure that what we want on the model railroad exists in the scale we choose, where H0 have most options and smaller scale less. Otherwise, we must create our own bespoke models.

Just enough high-level

At an early stage, before buying anything expensive, you need to take descions about:

• Size

• Scale

• 2-rail or 3-rail system

• Analog or digital train control

• Timeperiod, e.g. era.

• Prio of building landscape or running trains, or both.

• Budget, or more time.

To take these descisions, you need a lot of knowledge about the subjects of railways and model railroading. Perhaps you need to try different things, buy used stuff or borrow from friends.

The positive thing with these seven design decisions is that you can go very agile after answering them. Schrittwise or step by step as I will discuss later.

You can use the same approach for your large program. You need several of high-level decisions for your design, then you can be more agile.

We architect often talk about city plans, but we seldom give examples. I’m trying to explain the architecture view in another perspective with this serie of articles.

Enjoy.

Quick and dirty city planning

I had a classic Märklin railway when I grow up in the early seventies. Computers was not a thing back then, but the model railroad taught me how to connect wires and control several locomotives with physical switches. At university, I took this to the next level and learned to program PLCs used for automation in industries.

In a way, playing with Märklin and Meccano in my youth was the foundation for my professional career.

Re-discovering model railroads

Fast forward to modern times when digitalization have entered the game. In late 2013, I bought a Märklin starter set and added a locomotive and some extra wagons.

Quick and dirty, without vision and any real plans of what to do. At least I constructed a proper baseboard for the layout, based on previous experience from childhood.

Where to begin?

Why a Märklin digital starter set in H0?

It was easy, and similar to what I had before is the simple answer. Not knowing that technical debt is very much a thing in model railroading.

When you have a hobby, you prioritize what you want instead of what you need. I got a nice price on some long passengers coaches and a diesel locomotive, prototypic for 60's in West Germany. Adding them to they layout, the lack of planning begun to show.

The physical world is very physical, and size matters. One wagon is 24 cm long and I got twelve of them. Long trains are fun, but the more wagons you have, the more locomotives and space you need.

The first layout didn't accommodate all trains, and more tracks were needed. But adding more tracks on a fixed area is not always possible, thus you need to find another solution.

First re-design

If you add one more layer of tracks above the first level, then you can add more traffic. But then you have another challenge with inclines. With long trains, they can't be to steep, and the solution is longer baseboards.

Lesson learned, the hard way, scalability is very important, especially when working with physical architecture, as cost to change get expensive very fast.

Another issue was that I didn’t think though which time period to build for. I mixed steam locomotives from 50’s with modern diesels. It’s a hobby, so you can do whatever you want, but it itches.

The focus was on the railroad and running trains, not the landscape and the story for the buildings and their surroundings. However, I still had the buildings from my childhood packed in some cardboard boxes and they could be reused for the new layout.

Changes in life

We moved to another house in Skåne, without a basement and no place for a large layout. E.g. change of business environment and the model railroad ended up in the attic for better times.

Lack of vision, not thinking of non-functional requirements such as how to scale, flexibility and not anticipate total cost.

Not so different compared how organizations buy IT-systems without thinking why and what happens with those projects. Ending up on a shelf.

I found out the hard way that city planning for a model railroad needs at least some planning. Otherwise, it’s takes more time to redo everything and gets more expensive.

One more time

A year ago, after much more research, I found out a path to manage the classical limitations of model railroading of space, cost and time.

Enter the world of Schrittweise where I combine Enterprise Architecture thinking with an agile mindset. Upfront design and planning where it's needed, but not more.

The next article will be about what was enough planning, and probably not to much.

When your business model gets irrelevant

A year ago, I wrote about business strategy and Generative AI, and with AI agents, there is another twist to this topic.

Instead of thinking of how you can improve your business model, you should also have a look at the value proposition and customer segments you loose when your customers start using generative AI.

This is something that today is a reality in the film industry and related areas.

Agile city planning in small scale

We all been using the analogy of city planning when explaining enterprise architecture. What would happen if you instead did city planning without planning, just running agile?

Welcome to the world of model railroading.

This tabletop layout was built on the kitchen table ten years ago, but didn't survive the internal politics. If you build a layout you need to align with all the stakeholders in the family, and even if the table sounded like a good idea in the first place, it was not.

How did this cityplanning start then? Very agile, and the next articles in this series will describe the mindset behind Schrittweise, e.g. step by step.

If you think this is only toys for children, then try to do 100% autonomous operations of several trains and cars on your physical model railroad layout, without accidents.

Practical risk management

How do you practice risk management in your daily life?

As a typical Swede, I'm renovating the house during the summer vacation. This year, high up on the roof.

The question we asked ourselves in the spring was about the risks when doing cleaning and painting, and the cost for different alternatives.

When I was much younger, I used ladders to climb up, but they were sold with a previous house twenty years ago.

After breaking my ribs several times, plus a broken back, I concluded that a new ladder wasn't a good option.

Renting a skylift is not that cheap and with the Swedish summer, you can't plan sunny days ahead.

Therefore we settled for a movable scaffolding unit, reaching up 7 m from the ground. Added extra stabilizers, as it's high up when you are standing there.

Feels resonably safe from a risk perspective, don't you agree?

We also have the location of the house and weather conditions to think about.

We are very close to the sea, and some days during the summer, the wind more than 16 m/s.

How will you adjust your risk management approach when it's you who will be working on the highest platform in high winds?