Extremely new model railroader with a question

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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Happy New Years. I’m recently getting into trains and want to try model railroading in the future. My question is how do you start a railroading project from scratch. I see all sorts of projects in your magazine on how to build one that someone else has made, but how do you come up with an idea and go from there.

I live in central florida now, but I’m originally from Maine. I’d like to do the Boston and Maine RR. (i think that’s what it’s called). I just don’t know where to start. How much research do you do, if any? Do you sketck your design on paper first? How much of the railroad main line and towns do you include with the model?

I’m sorry for the post being so long. I’ll most likely have tons of questions in the future. I’m going to be a pain in the neck before long, hopefully not though. Someday, I’ll get over the fear of it and start modelling.

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Hi and welcome.

I think I have just what you want to read. I think it is a very perceptive question. Welcome to the hobby.

Click on the link below. The"Beginner’s Guide" in my signature.

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The answer is “as much as you want.” Generally, I would encourage any new model railroader to do the following things:

First, read. Not just model railroad books, but railroad history books. A trip to your local library will probably be helpful: not only do libraries generally have books on railroad history, they often have a few model railroading books that can be worthwhile in a “try before you buy” sort of way. Also, check the periodicals section: many libraries carry copies of Model Railroader and other hobby magazines, as well as TRAINS and other railfan magazines. This costs nothing but your time, and reading will both educate you and inspire you.

Second, visit. Find out if there are any model railroad clubs in your area (MR and this website have listings) and find out if you can visit their layout. If there are local hobby shops near you, check them out: some have in-store layouts or displays. Actually seeing model railroads in action provides a hands-on, close-up experience that reading doesn’t provide. In fact, while at that hobby shop, see if you can meet other local model railroaders. We’re a pretty gregarious lot and are often willing to show our layouts to newcomers.

Third, dive in and start building! Often a small layout needing no more space than a few feet of bookshelf space can become a workshop to teach basic skills, the seed of a bigger layout, or at least an entertaining distraction. Small layouts are also easier to finish than jumping into a gigantic basement-filling monster (assuming you have the space for one, which most don’t!)

Fourth, ask tons of questions! The folks here don’t mind answering…just don’t take any answer you see here as a final answer. Read, visit, get started and ask questions when they come up and you’ll be well on your way.

About your specific design questions: Yes, usually a layout is designed on paper (or on a co

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[#welcome]welcome to the forum! It’s easy to build a model RR empire - in a few years! First, read - go to the local library & get your hands on books about the Boston & Maine RR, then books on model railroading. Buy magazines, MR, MRR Craftsman are the 2 main mags. If there’s a Borders book store near you, they will let you look through the books for some time - just don’t mess up the pages. Join a model RR club!! I’m sure there are members of this forum from Fla who know of several clubs in central Fla - mayby tell us what town you are in or near. It won’t take you years to begin a layout and enjoy our hobby, and a club will give you a place to run your first loco or display your first building! Welcome again & enjoy!![:D][#welcome]

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Hi Jk, I am fairly new as well. I had an old American Flyer set over 20 years ago but I really am new when it comes to HO and the modern train things. The first thing I did was get a few model railroad magazines…I hit this forum…and I visited every hobby shop in town and asked the same question you did. Each place and each salesman gave me basically the same info but with a few biased suggestions. Mainly biased towards track type, track code (code 83 or code 100), and track brands. I mainly needed to know how much track I could fit on the benchwork that I had room for. I think the benchwork should be your first concern…figure out how much and what shape, height, etc and style of benchwork. There are a few good benchwork books at the local hobby shop. I then bought a bunch of track and just started hooking up track in different configurations until it looked the way I wanted to.

Following the beginners guides as suggested is a good suggestion. I read many of them online and a few books from the hobby shop before I spent a dime on actual trains and track.

I was prompted to buy the Code 100 track as I was told it was better for beginners and a bit less expensive. However now that I see a lot of nice layouts in person or from photos, I think I would of gone with the Code 83 as it looks better and is modeled closer to what a real track would be as far as rail height. All of this will become clear as you visit a few train shops, hop into the forum as you did (and I did) and ask tons of questions.

I have about 70 posts in the forum now and I joined in September. I think 65 of those posts are questions :slight_smile:

Hope this helps!

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thanks for all the responses, i’m from Kissimmee, Florida.

Jeff

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Ahhhh, those are the questions you must answer.

You can use the track plan of someone else, you can modify one, you can selectively compress an actual track plan schematic from the prototypee, or you can come up with something on your own. It all depends on what interests you most.

Some people like to model it as close to prototype as they can. Selective compression is probably the best bet for them.

Some people want just the flavor of the prototype, so they might take a few more liberties.

Some fall somewhere in the middle, like me. I arranged my tracks in my towns as close as I could to my prototype, but in between I let my hair down so to speak.

And then there are the freelancers. I kinda fit there too. A freelance road is a railroad that never really existed, but it exists in model form. It might look and be run so much like a prototype RR that you can’t really tell the difference. Or it might be way off the deep end.

The first thing I would do if I were in your shoes, and we all were at one time, is to do some reading. Find out what interests you.

Also, get a copy of “Track Planning For Realistic Operation” by John Armstrong. Even if you don’t want to plan your own RR, this is a must read book for understanding railroads and how they operate.

And keep asking questions! There are no stupid ones you know.

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If you have a store called Bookmans out your way, hit that. I think its a chain…at least in Phoenix…but its a used book store. They had tons of the history of railroading type books for very low prices, as well as some of the hobby books/magazines. I hit a gold mine when I walked in there.

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Colonial Photo & Hobby in Orlando has a good selection of trains in all scales. They can put you in touch with the local R.R. club.

Good luck.

Flip

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[#welcome]

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If I remember correctly, Kissimmee is in the Orlando area [?] It’s been a while since I was down that way. If so, there are a few train hobby shops nearby

  • All Aboard Train Shop, Mt Dora
  • Rob’s Hobby Shop, Ocala (at least I think it’s in your area)
  • Trains of Ocala, Ocala
  • Colonial Photo and Hobby, Inc, Orlando
  • The Train Depot, Winter Park

I got the list from the back of Model Railraoder magazine; I do not know anything about these stores - perhaps someone else can give suggestions. Check your Yellow Pages under Hobby, and visit some local shops. They can probably tell you about any local train clubs and you can get some idea about how receptive they are to helping out a newbie.

One of the first decisions you should make is what timeframe are you interested in modeling: steam (before 1940), Steam to diesel transition (1940 to 1960), first and second generation diesel (1955 to 1980). For Boston & Maine, their history ends in the early 1980s when they and Maine Central were sucked up by Guilford and basicly lost their identity as individual railroads.

Deciding on a timeframe will focus your research and will help you see what equipment is available for you to model your chosen railroad. You have picked a good time to start because there was not much B&M available in the past; now there is a good selection of steam and diesel locomotives from a number of different manufacturers. Also deciding on a timeframe early will help you resist buying some neat model that is either too old or too new fo rthe timeframe you want to model. Not much steam ran in the 1970s - for B&M, it was all first and second generation diesels then.

There are a number of good books, videos and DVDs on the B&M and northern New England railroads available. Morning Sun books have a number of B&M titles, but they are price

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Hello Happy New Years!

Let me take a moment to describe the Frankenstien that I built. It was supposed to be a custom project that required planning from start to finish. (It still aint finished, more on that later)

I did a project from nothing using Walthers Modulars last year and built a Cold Storage for A&P Foods. I planned what I wanted for the building, hunted down the needed parts studied the availible instructions, asked questions at the Hobby Shop. Sometimes I would open a package of walthers modular parts in front of the Store’s Owner to evaluate a specific part.

I thought about how big I wanted to go, where to put the rail dock and if ONE BIG building will do it or several small ones can do it. Then I thought about going wide and use alot of space or try to keep it narrow as to fit into as many potential rail sidings in the future. Everything about the building revolved around a 2 foot siding because I knew it will have rail service. What I really did not think of at the time is the amount of space needed to adequately model the truck dock, parking lot and gate.

Then I thought about what I wanted the facility to DO. Take reefer loads of perishables, seafood and meat and boxcars of grocery as well as some insulated cargo. Transfer it to the truck loading area for delivery to stores. I thought about the building, where would the walls without windows need to go to represent a cold part of the building, where to put the office, how many doors to install (Loading dock, rail dock and people doors) I thought about things like maybe a lunch area for employees and perhaps a fire escape and other things that makes a building a building.

Built the thing starting at the foundation, raildocks and worked around starting at one corner. What I should have done was make 4 complete walls and THEN put them together. Painting, and other little things went on as the project progressed. It took me about 5 months before the building was done. Even so it’s not done. Im still planni

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GET the last two issues of MODEL RAILROADER.

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Everybody here was “an extremely new model railroader” at one time and “still is” when we all ask a question on this forum…

[1] So, the answer to your initial question is like the catch-all answer to a multiple choice question: “All of the above.” There is no single silver bullet.

[2] In no particular order, here are three helpful books among others:

Track Planning for Realistic Operation (John Armstrong)…

http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=I&MAG=BOOK&MO=4&YR=1979&output=5

How to Build Model Railroad Benchwork (Linn Westcott)…

http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=I&MAG=BOOK&MO=3&YR=1996&output=3

Track Design (Hal Carstens)…

http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=I&MAG=BOOK&MO=3&YR=1989&output=5

[3] Take your good-old-time, and don’t be afraid to trust your common sense while having fun researching your prototype for the inspiration of your model railroad.

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[#welcome][#welcome]

Welcome to the forums!

The folks who got here first have stolen all of my usual thunder, so just a few comments:

  • Your `Maine’ railroads would be the Boston and Maine and the Maine Central. When looking for books about them, you want to know where and how they operated, what their buildings and equipment looked like and track diagrams of the various stations. All too many railroad histories are concerned with boardroom politics and financial finagling, not with the railroad itself. Buyer beware!
  • You have a learning curve ahead. Don’t expect your efforts to look like the front cover of Model Railroader right out of the box. Relax, enjoy, tackle things at your own pace. This is a hobby, not a job or a religion. In good time, you may well find yourself surpassing what’s on that cover.
  • Listen to advice - then decide for yourself whether or not to take it.
  • Read all of the Forum threads. There are answers here to questions you haven’t even thought of yet.

Above all, have fun!

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

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For research, try the B&M RR Historical Society.

http://www.trainweb.org/bmrrhs

Then there’s the B&M Wikipedia page at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_&_Maine_Railroad

For photos, try:

http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/bm/bm.html
http://photos.nerail.org/

For basic model railroading advice, try the National Model Railroad Association at:

http://www.nmra.org/beginner

My basic advice to you is to start small. Please realize that the great layouts you see in the magazines and at the RR clubs took many years of trial and error and sometimes lots of money to create. For your first ever layout, I would recommend the simplest of layouts to get you used to laying track, cutting rail, putting in switches, etc. Just go into it thinking that this first layout is just practice, and that if it doesn’t look good enough that it’s ok…you can rebuild it better next time.

As for equipment, you don’t need hundred dollar locos, but stay away from the “toy” train set-type locos from Bachmann, Life-Like, Tyco, etc. You will not be happy with their poor performance and they will cause frustration. Shop eBay and look for names like Atlas, Athearn, Proto 2000 or Proto 1000 (both by Life-Like/Walthers), etc. These are all good running locos, and some can be had for decent money.

As for cars, again, Atlas, Athearn, Proto 2000 & 1000, Accurail, Bowser, Walthers, and more are good brands. Stay away from the “toy” train sets like Bachmann, Tyco, Life-Like (non Proto), etc.

And also couplers. The new standard are knuckle couplers based on the Kadee coupler. Be watchful of old items for bid on eBay that they

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Welcome to the forum. This a great place to get support. You will make a lot of friends here.

My suggestion is read, read, read. Go to train shows and to see layouts at local model railroad clubs. You will know what you want when you see it.

Mostly, just have fun. Sue