I’m new to railroad modeling. I’m 63 and have two grandsons anxious to get started. I have a 13X16’ room in the basement to use and a ping pong table with a good possibility of adding an L table extension in this room. Need help on proper gauge (like ho or n), etc. I also have a wood working shop in the basement where I have made much of my furniture, fly rods, canoes, etc. so now I feel ready to begin this hobby with much help from the kids. What book(s) would you recommend to get a person off to a good start. Thanks, Brian
[#welcome]
Unless your plan is to set it up to run trains and then take it down when your done for the day, I do not recommend the ping pong table.
Just to the right of this post is a box labeled “Search Community”. If you type “bench work” in that box you will find a great many threads on various methods of constructing good bench work to support your layout.
Choosing a scale is a personal decision. HO is the most common, but N is catching up fast. There is more available in HO at this time, it is a little cheaper, and because it is bigger it is more detailed, but like I said, more N scale stuff is becoming available every day, and because it is smaller you can get a lot more layout in any given space. If you choose DCC, decoders are finally getting very small, so N is also becoming easier to run in DCC as well.
There are other scales, both larger and smaller, but they tend to be more toy like.
My layout is HO, Digitrax DCC. There are others in here who use and swear by other scales and systems.
At the top of this page you will find a button marked “Our Store”. There you can find a lot of great books to help. You can also find useful books in many libraries.
Brian
Welcome to the “club” ( I returned to the hobby after 20 years upon my retirement).
I suggest several books that I have (and have read), both are available from the Kalmbach store here or from a large web retailer (at a discount price). The books are:
Track Planning for Realistic Operation, Third Edition by John Armstrong
Building a Ready-To-Run Model Railroad by Jeff Wilson
There are numerous other books at: http://www.kalmbachstore.com/modeltrains-railroading-model-railroading-books.html try the Basic Book section and the Track Plans section.
I haven’t read it but Building a Model Railroad Step by Step by David Popp would seem to be a good starting point as would the Jeff Wilson book above.
Having a wood working shop will help with the bench work as you DON’T want to use the ping-pong table; unless you are salvaging the plywood.
As to HO vs N it’s a matter of what you and the grandson feel confident in modeling (N takes more care in terms of reliable track too).
Alan
Depends on your ambition level, what you want to accomplish and the age of your grandchildren.
If your main goal is to fairly fast build something that your grandkids hopefully will enjoy helping you build, and maybe like running for at least a couple of weeks or months before they bore of it, then I would just pick up one of those “getting started in” books from Kalmbach:
N scale is probably better if what fascinates you is running longish trains (since the trains are 1:160 scale), or trains with long cars, while H0 scale may be better if you want to see more details on each locomotive and car, and you want to run shortish trains with shortish cars from earlier times.
To estimate how many cars you can get e.g. in 3 feet of track, the calculation of how much space each car takes is fairly easy: length of real car (e.g 40 feet or 89 feet or whatever) times 12 inches/foot divided by scale factor (160 for N scale, 87.1 for H0 scale).
E,g - an 89 foot car in H0 scale : 89 feet x 12 inches/foot / 87.1 = 12.26 inches - 12 1/4". Or a little over a foot. So in H0 scale, you can’t quite fit three 89 foot cars in 3 feet of length.
There are some links in my signature below about track planning, which you may want to just browse quickly through to get an idea about some possibilities you may not have considered.
But whatever you do, have fun 
Grin,
Stein
I think it’s ironic that Phoebe Vet was the first to respond to my post. I grew up in East Stroudsburg, PA and traveled on the Phoebe Snow back in the 50’s to Hoboken. I now live near Atlanta. Thanks for your help.
I grew up in Binghamton and rode her between there and Chicago in the '60s, just before her swan song.
[#welcome]
First, let me second some of the advice above. Hold off building for a little while (depending on how far away the grandkids live, that might be easier said than done), and read, read, read, everything you can get your hands (or your browser) on. Lots of good advice on this site; many other good sites, and lots of published books. Eventually, you will need to decide on a scale, what era and prototype railroad (or whether you’ll be inventing your own), what kind of operations you want (switching, point-to-point, continuous running, or some mix of the three), and some other basics, then get a rough idea what you want to build and sketch it out. My advice would be for you to do the research, then get together with your grandkids and design the layout together. You can then take that preliminary design and get a concrete plan together for your next session with the grandkids.
Forget the ping-pong table. It’s too low. For your own sake (really, for your back’s sake), you’re going to want something that stands about 48" high or so. If your grandchildren are small, build a stepstool (that’s what I did for my kids, and it sounds like your woodworking skills are much better than mine). You can even build a podium-like structure with a shelf and railing for the powerpack etc.
Also, if you’re like most of us who are feeling their years, you might find that your eyes and fingers appreciate the larger size of HO scale.
Finally, I strongly recommend that you go with DCC. It’s not that difficult to figure out (some systems are basically “plug and play”), and although it’s more expensive, it will enable each of you to run his own locomotive at the same time without complicated wiring. I think this will be a key factor in your grandkids’ enjoyment.
So get reading! And come back and ask questions i