After a 22 year hiatus, I am getting back into the hobby and thinking about building another HO scale layout. I’ll only have about 8 X 12 feet in my garage to work with, but it’ll have to do. I am having a REAL hard time deciding on the era and rail line. My uncle worked for Atlantic/Seaboard/CSX for 26 years, so I’m leaning towards that. Problem is, if I stick to the Seaboard/CSX years, that relegates me to the 1967-current era. Because I haven’t BOUGHT anything since 1986, I have no idea if there is an abundance of locos/rolling stock/buildings/autos, etc. for this era. All I ever had before (I was 21 then) was a 1950’s era Santa Fe loco. Is there enough trains/scenery, etc. to build a 1990-current layout?? If so, where can I go to see some pix of modern-day layouts??? Thank you for any responses you may give!
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/default.aspx will give you many pics of the real thing. As to availability, 1990 + is “modern” and there are tons of stuff out there. The “transition” period, 1945 - 1960, has probably the greatest number of available locos/models, but the “modern” eera has plenty also. My [2c]
I do modern, theres alot available. Plus I am 29 and thats what I grew up around. Todays engines, rolling stock, buildings.
I would have to look at pictures if I wanted to do another era.
I tend towards the 70’s/80’s on my layout so I do find a fair bit of stuff—your era shouldn’t be difficult to do. There is a lot of stuff available. For locos I even find that you can even model railfan excursions with older equipment.
Visit the Walthers website - or better yet, go to the LHS and pick up the 2009 catalogue. It will show you how much is available. You might want to check out Athearn’s website too…Athearn is no longer carried by Walthers. Kato make quite a few modern engines too.
BTW you don’t have to do just one era, you could build a layout set to rotate between two or more years: 1967 - 1976 - 1985 - 1994.
Pitshop,
Why don’t you consider modeling that time period? IMHO, it was enjoyable from a railfan’s perspective and there’s plenty of models available today that will fit the bill nicely.
I knew a number of Seaboard Coast Line employees back in the 1970s. Great bunch of people ( got bunch of cab rides). I’m modeling the SCL 1967-74. Which means I get to model SCL passenger service and early Amtrak. Also means plenty of SAL and ACL power running around since SCL was slow in painting over it’s “heritage” fleet. Also good modeling opportinuty of the famous “split-scheme” look in which a a number of units kept their former paint schemes and received the SCL stenciling in matching colors.
My motive power includes P2K SD45 #2021 (the prototype actually came to my town regularly), two P2K SCL GP9s, and several P2K E-units that I’m currently stripping to repaint to SCL.
BTW: CSX was a long way into the future (1986).
Consider joining this group: ACL-SAL-SCLmodeler@yahoogroups.com
I’m a member and this group has a wealth of info that you may find helpful. You’d be most welcome.
Model the era that speaks to you. What fond memories of prototype railroads do you have? Go with the scene that is clearest in your mind’s eye. Do you have a thing for steam engines? In real life, the steamers were all gone by 1960, so that makes a dividing line, era wise. Service life of railroad equipment is 20 to 40 years. A locomotive built in 1968 might be still running today. So you can be pretty flexible, and still be prototypical, and with a little modeler’s license, you can be even more flexible.
Plenty of good looking stuff is available for just about any era since the Civil War, so you can go with the era that appeals to you. One benefit of the earlier eras is shorter cars, which allows more train in the same layout space. Freight cars were only 40 foot long up thru the 1970’s. Modern cars are all 50 foot and up.
If you go N scale, the modern era has the most things available. There’s also a good deal of CSX prepainted locos as well.
Thanks for the reply. I have always been a HO scale fan, so I’ll stick to that, although the N scale DOES appeal to me, as an answer to getting as much train into a small space. I also noticed that you’re in Aiken…I’m in Summerville. I hope the hobby shope are better there than here. Only 1 Hobby Town in Charleston!
Skip Williams
Lots of good advice so far. I’ll only note that if you’re going to run steam and if you want to be accurate, you’ll probably be buying brass–spending money! Still, of all the problems that a person has to deal with, this is one of the best. I’m sure that if you take your time and are patient, all will be revealed (sorry about the mysticism).
Ed
Skip
One other consideration - 12’ x 8’ isn’t a huge area in HO, so an earlier era such as the 1950’s with smaller locomotives and 40’ boxcars will give you scope for more trains than the modern era with its 89’ autoracks, 30,000 gal tank cars and yards of double stack containers.
Ian
There’s a Hobby Lobby, and then, maybe 2 blocks or so further on, there’s a nice LHS called Time Zone Hobbies and Toys. There’s R/C cars and planes, wooden Thomas stuff, car kits, etc., but there’s also a nice stock of model railroading supplies there as well. Dern, I forget where Summerville is though, but I’m guessing close to Charleston.
Ed, I must say that I had just about made up my mind to go with modern era Seaboard, but your comment about mysticism left me questioning my choice!! Is there something about steam era that I need to know?
I would add that you may want to think about the benchwork for your space, then the mainline to fit your benchwork. This will give you some idea as to what maximum radius curves you can have. This will of course dictate what size locos and cars you can run.
While modern 6 axle locos and rolling stock can operate on 22" radius curves, it doesn’t look the greatest. Most large steam is also very unforgiving on tight curves. For either of these consider minimum radius of 24".
I often wonder is it best to fit the benchwork to the era or the era to the benchwork. Sometimes a space is too small for modern operations.
If you plan carefully, you don’t have to be locked into an era. Sure, I was all set to model 1967, based on my ancient collection of rolling stock, and my familiarity with that time from having lived through it, bell-bottoms, Beatles and all:
But, then I went to my LHS one fateful day and fell in love. She was a short, dark beauty, and when she first hissed at me, and then gave a come-hither whistle, well, I was hooked. Yeah, there was that mysticism, too, but I’d caught steam.
In the eastern part of the country, at least, many of the structures you see could have been built any time over the last century. Avoid the fast-food places, and your layout can be changed from 1967 to 1937 just by swapping out the trains and automobiles. It’s even faster than climbing in the Wayback Machine.
What I was trying to get at with the first part of my comment is that steam engines were pretty much custom built. With occasional and pretty rare exceptions, each railroad’s steamers looked different than all the other’s–even a single railroad’s classes of 2-8-2 often looked different. A 2-8-2 on the ACL wouldn’t look like a 2-8-2 on the WP, or the GN, or the UP. And on the GN, O-8’s didn’t look like O-4’s didn’t look like O-3’s (heavy USRA mikes that had the air pumps on the front of the smokebox). With diesels (again with the ever present occasional exceptions), they were and are mass produced with relatively minor variations. GENERALLY, the differences between a GP9 on the ACL, WP, GN and UP would be visually minor (except for the paint). So, getting a reasonably accurate diesel for your favorite road is usually a lot easier than getting one in steam.
As far as the “mysticism” part goes:
Choosing an era and a railroad is normally something that just “happens”. If you feel like you’ve gotta make a decision by next Tuesday, STOP. You don’t. The answer should be one you’re happy with. Which one is that? Why, you’ll know it when you see it. One thing I’ll recommend is not to spend a lotta money on just anything–not just now, anyway. Who wants to get stuck with a $500 brass model of a B&A 2-8-4 (intrigueing as they are) when you end up modeling the Santa Fe and you want one of theirs. Well, of course you can sell the B&A engine to someone else, but it’s sorta wasted effort. You might want to pick up a few freight car kits and maybe a switcher that looks nice, and see what happens. Also, lots of reading and daydreaming and visiting forums like this one.
I’ll mention that I got hooked on the GN because their steamers tended to have Belpaire fireboxes, Vanderbilt tenders, and air pumps on the smokebox front, and because of the domed Empire Builder. Then, because I’m also very fond of the Two-toned North Coast Limited, I got interested in the SP&S (which ran cars from
I wouldn’t let availability of equipment dictate my choice of eras. There is plenty available for just about any 20th century period. With a layout the size you will have, you aren’t going to need a large or varied roster so you should be able to find enough equipment no matter what era you decide on. If you are really a stickler for prototypical fidelity, that will narrow your choices somewhat, but you can always modify your locos and rolling stock to make them accurate. Personally, I avoid rivet counting like the plague so this isn’t a big issue with me.
Oh heck ya, that’s all they have nowa days. I’m trying to build a 1940s era layout and its extremely hard to sift through the 70’s through modern stuff to find anything older.[banghead]
I model modern settings with the some steam run as excursions runs.
UP runs there excursion from time to time out here so I do the same on my layout. I love big steam 4-8-4’s 4-6-6-4’s and the big boys 4-8-8-4’s. My favorite excusion is my 4-8-4 Northern with 4-6-6-4 challanger in UP’s Overland two tone grey with 14 Overland cars. On my big layout those two double ended through my mountain range look VERY impressive. So model what you want. This is a fun hobby to do so have fun with it. If you need ideas most of us have links to our home page’s. Click the contact tab scroll down to home page and click and of course you can just ask. [#welcome] back and have some fun with it.