I spent the day at the 3 local hobby shops and book stores. The hobby shop closest to me is a joke. I had some guy who knew less about model trains than I did trying to sell me a Lionel set to go around my Christmas tree lol. The hobby shop a few towns over was great. They have been there for over 50 years and are big into N, HO, O. they had a ton of stuff in that place, Branford Hobby in CT. the third shop was a small hole in the wall with a bit of everything for all hobbies. I also stopped by Barns and Noble, no luck there.
Branford hobby was a fun, looking at all the stuff they had made me want to go home and get started lol, but started on what.
So far what I have come up with is this
HO
1 HO seems to have the most local support, along with N
2 I have a lot more HO stuff than I realized
3 I do have some experience with HO
N
1 offers a lot more in a much smaller space
However I don’t think I can work with that scale, its small… very small. I was looking at some of the tiny little people you can add and well, holding them in front of me I could hardly tell what they were lol. My eyes are not too good these days.
The other option I am considering is G, I love the idea of an outdoor train set into the landscape. The problem with G is no local support which means everything is bought through catalogs, mail order and online. Not good for a beginner IMO. Also I am having some work done on my house over the next year or so (new roof and siding). The area I would consider using G would be close enough to the house for this to be a problem. So G is on the back burner for now.
As you can tell I am probably going with HO. Not that anything is written in stone but it seems to be what will work best at this time. I have a book from years ago with a half dozen plans in it. I posted one I was thinking about. This book has very detailed plans for construction, wiring and scenery. For a first build it may not be a bad way to get started.
Let
Go with HO - I am biased, I admit it.
To download pics:
- Digital camera
- Pics in a folder on your computer.
- Online service like photobucket. You have to apply but it is free
- Put pics from computer file into photobuket. It will kind of show you how,
- Copy and paste the URL from photobucket (Last line)into the text and it will show up.
Its that simple but not that easy, but I learned how so there is hope for all.
you need to get an account with a photo hosting site www.photobucket.com or www.railimages.com seem to be the preferred ones here. then after you upload an image to their site, right click the image and choose the “properties” option from the context menu. A small window will open, one of the lines will show its location (lets say like “http://www.photobucket.com/yourname/layout.jpg” for example).
copy that entire line (it might scroll a bit…) in between image tags on these forums, like this [img]“http://www.photobucket.com/yourname/layout.jpg”[/img] (just remove the * symbols - i needed to add those to the post so the tags show up)
To post a picture, you will need to upload the picture to a 3rd party hosting site. Many members in here use photobucket.com. Then, insert the link between [img.] and [/img.] (without the periods).
Brad
I’m on HO and G scales, N scale is too small for me and my large hands and (not so good) vision. Every time I see N scale trains, I want to get a flyswatter and some bug spray. Also, if you go DCC, which you probably will eventually, N scale locos are much more of a challenge to install decoders into. Of course, buying engines with factory installed decoders avoids this issue.
Brad
The plan looks pretty decent. Room for a yard, some industrial switching, and some heavy mainline running. It’s a good plan to start with until you decide which phase(s) you prefer the most.
It will also give you an opportunity to try some scenery. I would recommend not putting the track down permanently (i.e., no ballast or gluing the track down). After you gain some experience and figure out your “givens and druthers” you can recycle the track into your new layout.
Tom
