I thought I’d dive in here. Being a lurker for my return in HO Adventures (I’m more active in G-Scale), I must say a lot of information I’ve found has saved my neck just a bit. To cut straight to the chase, what sparked my desire to run HO alongside G was a picture I had on my hard drive from Burlington Northern’s Glory Year of Passenger Service, the year just prior to Amtrak’s Formation. Being that if I did it in G, I’d go bankrupt, I turned to the scale I started in when I was 7.
The picture in question has helped me build my own 7 car Burlington Northern Empire Builder. So far I’m 5 of the 7 cars, one being ordered via my LHS, the other needing to be ordered by the LHS. The idea was that I wanted to own a replica of this photo’s train. That grew into “I want to own the 10 car Burlington Northern Coach set aswell since it’s being closed out and not widely modeled.” That turned into “Well I’ll build a static display for the coaches.” Again that turns into “I need an intermodal freight to pass it since it’ll look more realistic.” By then, I was drawing up plans to bring my G-Scale Layout Plans into HO as well. Let’s face it. I’m a model train addict. Embrace it.
I would also like to state, that I’m sort of a rare breed of modeler. I like to prototype freelance. And I do things that’s enjoyable to me and don’t really care what the “populace” thinks is right. If it’s not enjoyable to me, than I don’t see any fun in it. And Being a garden railroader, I prefer to have fun. This is not to say I’m not open to advice because my skill set is about as good as a 2 year old. But we learn along the way and I hope to receive a lot of help as I begin to learn to take things to the next level.