The useful side of your layout....

[spudfan]

I have a daughter with special needs. When she was young a lot of the things that parents take for granted in their children had to be worked on. One of these was my daughter's eye/hand coordination.

My daughter used to come up to my layout. I showed her how to use a controller to move a loco. Speed was either maximum or stationary when she used the controller. I put a loco on a long siding and showed my daughter how to move it to the buffer stop using the controller. Sometimes she would hit the buffers and get upset. Her trouble was that in order to move the loco she had to look and what she was doing with the controller and thus she didn't see the loco moving.

Anyway to cut a long story short we persevered and one day she edged the loco to the buffer stop WITHOUT having to look at the controller. We had cracked the eye/hand coordination. Not all of the other things we had to work on were as easy as this but it just goes to show what time and patience and a little fun can do.

While working at this I had to remove any signals in the area as sometimes shed catch on them when helping me and get upset. I never got around to putting them back on the layout. Funnily enough I never had an issue safety wise due to this!!!!

 

Just realised I clicked the wrong section and put this in the wrong section. Perhaps it could be moved.

[Broithe]

As noted elsewhere just now - even the big boys hit the stops now and then...

 

[jhb171achill]

That is an absolutely superb story. Best wishes to your daughter.