Preiser figures. I think Preiser makes the best figures. Not only do they look the best they have a huge variety of styles. I have hundreds of them on my layout and they really do bring it to life. I also have other brands but Preiser figures are the stars.
Kadee couplers are also great, so HO scale has some uniform couplers that look realistic and can operate.
Flex track is awesome so we don’t have to hand lay track or use 18 inch curves.
Walthers for putting all products together in one catalog so adults can still have a wish book.
Hmm, so many great products/ideas… Just a few of the best off the top of my head:
Static fibers and applicators.
The various ground-foam scenic products.
Evergreen styrene products, and a special tip of the hat to the late Al Armitage for his early efforts in promoting styrene as a scratchbuilding material.
Grandt Line!
Flex track and ready-made switches.
The recent development of “dead rail” battery power.
We take these little guys for granted these days but every time I watch my nearly to scale, three-color searchlight signals automatically change colors (thanks to I-R LEDs embedded in the roadbed) I just get all smiley [:D]
Not to mention cab lights, number boards, the Walthers traffic light, lighted flood lights on the roof of my Capitol Limited “Moonlight Dome”, LEDs allow us to place nearly scale sized lighting just about anywhere the real world would have them.
Just amazing.
Yes, there are many other great advancements and I agree with all the other contributions above but the advances in sub-miniature electronic wizardry are indeed a real benefit to all modelers!
Oh, and I should mention, too, that about 80% of my entire layout room is illuminated by LEDs as well! [tup]
I’ll emphatically third Mobileman44’s and Brakie’s mention of Model Railroader Magazine,(or Kalmbach pubs)
And this forum…
Lest we forget (HO in my case) vehicles and equipment, a sub hobby in itself:
Keeping it affordable; Jordan, CMW, Boley, Woodland Scenics kits, Athearn KWs and Freightliners, Minitanks (Roco?) Williams Bro’s, Herpa (some)
Quality worth a few more bucks; Athearn’s more recent trucks, Wiking, Lee Town…
Those are some of my faves, but the list is not complete, just off the top of my head.
Put Ulrich in where you think it fits. Norscott, Busch, Walthers, Alloy Forms, Kibri, Preiser, and those well detailed resin kits from various makers are some I haven’t bought into yet, but look great.
Wha’d I forget?
Here’s an older pic of some of the vehicle family, even with a few Matchbox trucks detailed and snuck in.
That’s not just about being elitist. If you do any sort of operating with car cards or switchlists where movements are based on car numbers, every car needs to be unique - just like the real thing. If every box car on your system has the same ID number, you can’t even do it.
I agree with a lot of your choices but would put KD couplers #1 on my list. Never was a brass collector and bought only one basswood rolling stock kit which I never got around to assembling. Loved Allen Keller’s video and Evergreen styrene products have been a big part of my layout building. DCC in general might be my #2 choice. Never was interested in hand laying track so flextrack would find a place on my list. Photo realistic backdrops would make the cut as well.
I do switching with car cards and waybills but my operating system allows for blocks of freight cars that remain permanently in the consist of through trains so if I have a car with a duplicate number one of them will go in these blocks. These blocks are at the front of these trains while the cars to be switched are on the rear. I also have a couple industries that receive 3 car blocks of cars from an off the layout shipper which are always switched together and I use one car card for all three so it doesn’t really matter if the individual numbers are the same.
I mean wow, what a good idea. Consisted locos that are actually talking to each other via direct radio and real-time 1000 speed steps matching, no matter how geared or aged your locos are.
This biggest one I take for granted so much that I totally forgot about it:
Walk Around Throttles! Running trains is so much more fun when you can go on a journey with them instead of watching from a remote location. As a kid I connected Tyco slot car throttles to my Tyco train transformers so I could walk around the layout. I still had to throw the direction switch on the transformer but I wasn’t stuck there. I could walk around with my train. Now I have two DC power CMI Super Blue transformers which are walk around, and I love them.
Without it, the hobby as we know it would be orders of magnitude more difficult.
Even though electricity is not specifically for model railroad use, it does enable so much in the hobby that it should be reqarded as a sine qua non ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine_qua_non ) for the hobby even ignoring its use as a locomotive power source.
How would you like to light your layout with gas light, whale oil lamps or candles?
Wanna build a layout without the use of power tools (battery or otherwise)? Then again, it’s always possible to have semi-portable power tools operated by foot treadles similar to a 19th Century dentist’s drill http://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/items/56743 , but they’re kinda klunky to drag around. It should be possible to beef that up a bit so you can make the foot powered equivalent of a battery operated drill/driver.
Of course, without electricity, there’d be no internet available to enable moaning and kvetching about customer service, prices, disappearing brick and mortar hobby shops and the imminent demise of the hobby. On the brighter side, there’d probably be no hobby in imminent danger of demise.
Heck, the forums got a shout out from Cody in this month’s Step By Step column on assembling metal vehicle kits (specifically the GHQ 1950’s Farm Tractor), when he mention dipping the unpainted metal in vinegar to prep the surface for painting.
I checked around, and didn’t see a mention of CA aka super glue in this thread so far, so add that to the list (or give it an upvote if I missed it).
Also home decal printing, although my success rate on that is less than 100% (by a fair amount…)
