my father n law gave me and my son, his train from when he was a youngster. it’s a '47-48 engine #2025 with coal wagon and #2400 series passenger cars. decent shape but time as not been kind. it has the 115v/275watt monster transformer type-zw that runs 4 trains. so far i have been able to get everything working except one of the lights on the trans. as a beginner, i have reasearched the engine and trans. to get how it works and to fix the train to get it wired and running. i have been looking at differnet layouts and picked a couple that will fit the space i have. some of my intial questions are:
are there any “how-to” books that i might could read to figure out other questions i’m bound to have? what is this box of clips for? (the track cross braces fit into them and i’m guessing that’s for attaching to the table maybe?) i cleaned up the train, and could lay on some nice black paint on the engine or would it be better to leave as is to show some character? when i go to start the layout, i’m sure there is a sequence perhaps, to laying down everything? (like green carpet, then track, then buildings or moutains or whatever?) and speaking of that, what is a good base material to go over the plywood? man the puzzling quesions just keep coming. i’m not going to hijack this forum, so i’ll stop for now.
thanks in advance for your help and i promise to put your advice to good use and pay it forward as well.