Greetings,
I’m new here so please feel free to point me towards applicable threads. I am in the new grandfather phase of life and my wife actually asked me to get back into this for the grandkids. The problem is we live in west Texas (no basements) and my wife is a quilter (no spare room :-)). I will have about a half of a spare bedroom/office, so maybe a 9x7 area. What are the thoughts around setting up in HO vs HO narrow guage vs N guage? I had thought i would probably go with N, but after looking around a bit, I notice that HOnarrow guage might be a good compromise. Sorry if my terms arent correct…
Of course, like most my age, my first train was a Lionel O…followed by a 5x9 HO setup in the garage in my preteen years. I also have a very small N guage set that we use on Christmas table top displays. After being out of this for 40 years, I was amazed at the changes, such as DCC…and the high prices.
Mark
HO vs. HO narrow gauge:
Both are the same scale, so everything OTHER than the track and the rolling stock will be the same size. Trees, buildings, roads, vehicles, landforms all the same size. The rolling stock is about 20-25% smaller. Track is only slightly smaller, so the minimum radius may be 15 inches instead of 18 inches. Down side to narrow gauge, mostly steam engines and small steam engines so less power, especially on grades. If you buy larger engines (2-8-2’s) then you will be back to standard gauge minimum radii. there were much fewer major narrow gauge lines so there is much less equipment and very little of it is RTR.
Down side to standard gauge is there is so much stuff available that you will be tempted to get too much and too big stuff and run it on minimum radius curves.
HO vs N scale:
Everything in N scale is much smaller than HO, scenery, track and rolling stock. Equipment selection is about 75% of HO. You can get the same design in N in about 5/8 the space of HO. What would be an absolute minimum radius curve in HO (15" ) will be a medium curve in N. Down side is that everything is smaller. Less space for stuff in the engines, less weight in the engines, smaller writing on the cars, fingers seem bigger and eyes seem less sharp. Modern N runs as well as HO, so you can do all the running and operation you could do in HO in N.
Unless you are really interested in narrow gauge, I wouldn’t suggest it. There are wonderfule layouts in narrow gauge, but you have to be willing to do a lot of work, spend some money and you really won’t gain that much in footprint over standard HO (the real railroads had the same problem, which is why narrow gauge railroads stopped being built).
As far as HO vs N it really all boils down to how comfortable are you
Since this is for very young children, I suggest Lionel or American Flyer with a bunch of action accessories. Add a Thomas the tank engine. Kids love it. The trains are big enough for them to handle.
Narrow gauge, scale model railroading, etc. are more suited to older children and adults.
Of course if this just an excuse for granddad to mess around with trains, then go with whatever interests you. [swg]
Enjoy
Welcome to the forum, and what a great place to be! Not just West Texas, but in a position where you have a space to work with, the desire, and perhaps most importantly, “Permission”.
Certainly I would suggest reading and looking quite a bit before making the purchase plunge. Buy some of the current magazines and some of the softbound track planning books such as “102 Layouts” to get your ideas flowing.
Folks doing layout planning often develop a list of “givens and druthers”. Your available space is a given, but we have no idea about your preferences for your model railroad. Steam or diesel? Larger main-line locomotives, or smaller shortline or narrow-gauge? Perhaps the image of a nice passenger train curving into a major station is what you would really want to recreate, and that may guide you to the N Scale side of things to allow full-length passenger cars to operate within your space.
I would suggest that you include one more scale in your study: On30, also known as On21/2. This is “O” scale equipment operating on HO-width track… so it scales out to 30" or 2 1/2 feet between the rails. A great deal of equipment has come out in this scale recently, and many of the smaller locomotives, being narrow gauge, can run on relatively small radius curves and could fit within your space. A potential advantage is that this larger equipment is a bit easier on “grandpa-aged” eyes. With the larger equipment, although it is not necessarily cheap, you may well be able to build a delightful layout with just one or two On30 locomotives instead of a larger number that you would tend to buy for the smaller scales.
Read and enjoy the possibilities for just a bit… but don’t wait too long and then enjoy the plunge. I look forward to hearing about the decision that you make.