Hello all,
I told my wife ,not to long ago, that if we ever hit the lotto,my train collection would grow to be overwhelming. With that said, I began to dream even more…yeah a park train with miles of track. Track running ,all over the place,tunnels, bridges the whole nine yards. Is this a dream of mine or do others dream of the same ? Do you have a park train or live steam railroad ?
Patrick
I’d love to get into live steam and large scale but there are two things standing in the way. The first is price. Large scale railroad requires lots of acres, dump trucks full of ballast, expensive track and equipment. My guess is that someone would need, at minimum, $100,000 in discretionary income up front and that is assuming you already have five or more acres land of available. The second barrier is that most people in live steam are tool and die makers and build the equipment themselves. This usually requires having a machine shop at your disposal. If you cannot build the equipment yourself you must hire somebody to design and build one for you.
There are some commercially produced large scale equipment. The husband of the woman who writes the For Better or For Worse comic strip owns one such company. But that is one company that operates on the “If you have to ask how much it costs you probably cannot afford it” philosophy.
There are also some smaller scale live steam clubs. The operate under the same principle – it is a mini-steam engine with a boiler, etc… – but the equipment is not big enough to ride on.
I heard of one guy who did it up big with live steam all over his backyard…and then decided to do it even bigger. really got out of hand.
Read the book Walt Disney’s Railroad Story.
Walt Kimball who drew animations, whos likeness is Jiminy Cricket… had a full sized steamer, but not much track.
You can dream big, however if your restricted in space you have to learn to enjoy the hobby in other ways, and adapt.
Of course just buy MSTS and build a 500 mile line and it fits on your desktop…in your computer…
Yeah, I have had the same dreams. If you have enough dough, like winning the Powerball jackpot, all dreams could become reality. But as my luck would have it, I usually end up contributing my share towards making some other sucker rich.[banghead]
Get a copy Live Steam magazine. They list run dates and times all over the country. Some track is private and some is at municiple parks. It’s a good way to find out more about the hobby. The choices are electric, gas and steam. Some ready made is available though a lot of the hobbists are also machinist or amatuar machinists and combine the skills with the hobby.