Looking Back & Looking Forward: 2018 Review & 2019 Goals(?)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

As has become an annual habit, the turning of the new year is a great time to look back at what I've accomplished on the layout during the past year and look forward to what I'd like to accomplish in the coming year. If you're anything like me, when you're head-down working on stuff, it's easy to think of all you have yet to do and forget what all you've already done. So this annual post is a chance to step back, take stock, and get some motivation for the upcoming year.

But first, the sobering truth. Here were my goals for 2018:

• Finish Wethersfield
• Gra-Rock building
• John Wallace's house
• Hartford Skyline backdrop
• Rt. 15 Overpass
• Photo backdrop, scenery & details
• Finish Saybrook
• Ballast track
• Rt. 1 Overpass
• Ford dealership & background/backdrop buildings
• Signal bridges
• Photo backdrop, final scenery & details
• Finish East Berlin
• Stan-Chem plant
• Abandoned station
• Photo backdrop, scenery & details
• Finish Class J-1 2-8-2 #3022
• Tender mods
• Boiler detailing
• Painting/weathering
• Decoder install (Loksound steam?)

The honest reality is that many of those things have been on my "Goals" list for a few years now (long-time readers may recognize some familiar bullet points...), and they'll be on my list again. But that doesn't mean I didn't do anything in 2018. In fact, despite a year filled with a lot of family challenges, I actually got a few things knocked off the "2018 Goals" list, and a few are in progress:

• The "Gra-Rock" building is started, and thanks to Dave Messer, progress is being made
• Finished the Route 15 Overpass, though I still need to scenic around it
• Started some scenery around Valley Coal in Wethersfield, but my efforts haven't merited a post yet
• And, though I didn't mention it on last year's goals list (though it was in that post) I finally finished the B&O P-11 flatcar(!)

As for the other bullets on the 2018 Goals list - I've got a big, fat goose egg. And, after looking over the past year, I realized I only had 4 ops sessions for the whole year. Ugh! :^(

But that doesn't mean I didn't accomplish anything in 2018. As I went back over my posts, I realized that I spent a LOT of time doing what I enjoy most in the hobby - research and tinkering. Unfortunately, neither one of those past-times result in much progress on the layout. But they do result in a better running layout (tinkering with couplers and decoders, for example), and sometimes even result in some unexpected opportunities:

• Organized all my research on operations into a clinic for this past year's NERPM
• Got my first full article published in the Model Railroad Hobbyist e-zine
• Taught myself how to do resin casting for the Rt. 15 overpass girders, which resulted in another article(!)

And lately, there's even been some actual, honest-to-goodness, modeling going on. Yes, coming full circle back to the top of last year's list of goals, the little Cape Cod house I'm building will go across the street from John Wallace's house in Wethersfield - and will get me just that little bit closer to getting the Wethersfield scene done. Finally. After all these years. Might it happen in 2019? I hope you'll be as interested to find out as I am! :)

At the end of the day though, despite how motivating goals lists can be, we have to remember that this is a hobby - a great way to escape the stress that sometimes accompanies everyday work and family life. The last thing we should do is have it become yet another source of stress.

So, I am hereby going to break with tradition and not list any goals for the up-coming year. If 2018 taught me anything, it's taught me that life is short and time with family and friends is some of the best time you can spend. If in the upcoming year this hobby provides an occasional stress-release or, even better, an opportunity to spend time with friends, then that will be a goal well worth accomplishing. Everything else is gravy.

That said, stay tuned. I still hope to make some tangible progress on the layout - and even knock off some of those old bullets . . .