Finally decided to start a first time project. Is it best to build f rom scratch, or a set? Any ideas of a good starter?
Hi!
Welcome to the world’s best Hobby!!! I’ve been playing with trains since the early '50s, and have been around Lionel, N scale, and mostly HO scale trains.
If you are looking to get into HO, I would urge you to go to the local hobby shop and put together your own “set”. This way, you can get what best suites your needs and interests. There are many inexpensive quality locos out there (Athearn, Bachmann, etc), and countless rail cars of either kit or ready to run form. Personally, I prefer the Athearn Blue Box kits, as they are inexpensive, reasonable representations, and terrific runners. Trackwise, I prefer Atlas components, but there are many other options out there. And for power, if you are going to start with DC, I would highly recommend MRC powerpacks. If you want to start out with DCC, the LHS is better equipped to help you.
Now please understand, I am not putting down sets. They are certainly an easier way to get started and typically have “all you need” included. But if you feel that you are really looking to get serious about the hobby, and will be spending a lot of time, effort, and of course money, then “building your own” is the way to go.
IMHO of course…
Mobilman44
My wife actually got me back into the hobby after an almost 30 year hiatus with a train set for Christmas a few years back. Well that let the Genie out of the preverbal bottle and it ain’t ever going to fit back in that little bottle. That set was a cheapy Life-Like pair of FA locomotives with one Amtrak passenger train and one Santa Fe war bonnet freight train. Those two engines have since been retired to one my display shelves and it prompted me to go to Mom & Dad’s house up north and retrieve what was left of my HO layout from years past 300 plus pieces of rolling stock and 25 engines. Well dad didn’t see the need to keep the boxes in a dray part of the basement and someone had rummaged through all of my old stuff leaving me with not much more then a few pieces of useful rolling stock and a lot of memories. I now have a 30’x40’ layout under construction in a free standing building, plus one in the basement as well, over 1200 pieces of rolling stock and upwards of 150 engines and still growing.
Do some research here subscribe to Model Railroader and go to your LHS (Local Hobby Shop) and start your journey with your own set of cars and a couple of engines of your choosing.
If I may give you a little advice that I wish someone would have given me when I first got back in to the hobby.
A: Don’t buy junk or as some like to call it “Train set quality stuff” you’ll only wind up replacing it all as your tastes gravitate towards better stuff which they will.
B. Start off with DCC, the lore of DC is inciting as it is much cheaper then DCC and it was all there was back when I first played with trains a zillion years a go back in the cave when mastodons roamed the earth.
C. Books, books, & more books. Check out the online store here and the Kalmbach library of books about the hobby. They cover just about every facet of the hobby one could imagine and will prove to be invaluable to you in the future when you start building structures, wiring, and building bench work etc.
B
Welcome to the Hobby!
I also am for pieces. This is my second go around and I again bought a set. It was a good set don’t get me wrong, but as my world got larger, My power pack had to get larger. The track was not the best quality, good just not great and the amount that came in the set was just about useless, because you will probably want MUCH more. The locomtive for the most part is OK. It works and it pulls good and smooth. but as was said before you will want better and the better you get the happier you will be. The cars you will get will be just a couple. Only enough to get you started and sooner than later you will want a longer train. So you see out of my set the track ended up not being used, and the power pack isn’t used any more.I agree strongly with buying a loco of good quality, not the best but good. a couple of decent cars and a good bunch of track. And the power of your choice. After you’ve developed somewhat of a plan. Truthfully it will be fairly expensive. But you won’t be throwing half of your investment to the side either. You won’t regret it.
Advantage of a set. IF you are not sure you will like Model Railroading then get a set. It is less expensive and if you don’t like it then you aren’t out much. However, remember, often times watching a train go around a three foot circle, as with many sets, with nothing to do but watch it…go…around a…3 foot circle. Doesn’t give the hobby a fair chance.
Have fun! Todd
With a set one gets some economy. When buying piece by piece one gets only the pieces that are wanted. The track that comes in sets will be the type that has built-on roadbed. There are fewer design options with this type of track and it limits one to a single brand. One can generally get “better” items when purchased separately. The issue for people new to the hobby is identifying a good piece over a poor piece.
Athearn has some sets that are reasonibly good. Bachmann Spectrum (and Spectrum line only) sets are OK.
Depends. A prepacked train set gets you everything you need to start running, and is cheaper than buying track, cars, locomotives, and power pack separately. If you have a little more money, the equipment you buy separately will be nicer stuff.
First off, buy and read a couple of Model Railroader magazines. Look at the ads, gain an idea of pricing and what’s new and cool.
If you go the train set route, check a couple of things. First off, the train set ought to come with knuckle couplers, not the NMRA horn hook jobs. Knuckle couplers are pretty much standard now, a set with the older horn hook couplers has been sitting on the shelf for a long time. Check the type of track. Most train sets have track with a rubbery plastic ballast/roadbed attached to the ties. There are at least three makers of this stuff and the different brands don’t intermate. See if the shop you buy from carries more track sections that intermate with the stuff in the set. The sets come with just enough track to make an oval, no turnouts. First thing you are going to want is more track to make a bigger layout. Train set cars are OK as is. I run quite a few train set cars that sport repaint and decals, or just some Dull Cote and a coal load, or other detailing and weathering.
For my money, I’d do a little research, decide what era and line you want to model (or whether you want to totally freelance it) and go buy a decent quality loco and a few pieces of rolling stock.
If you’re not going to get right into DCC (which is the latest technology, but significantly increases the initial capital outlay), buy something that is “DCC Ready” so you don’t have to get into major soldering jobs (which tend to strike terror into the hearts of newbies) to install DCC if you later decide that’s the way to go.
As others have said above, you will need additional track pieces to make a track plan that won’t bore you to tears in 15 minutes (while I like layouts that allow continuous running, I like to be able to reroute them and stop to change cargos every now and again). Attached roadbed is problematic: while it allows you to get up and running quickly, it severly limits your track geometry, and generally isn’t interchangeable with other brands.
And to address another point, while the hobby CAN (ok, does) get expensive, you generally don’t have to spend it all at once. Also, while the temptation initially will be to buy everything off the shelf, if you poke around these boards long enough, you’ll find that there’s usually a cheaper way to get the same results – or at least results that you can live with until you can afford what you REALLY want to do (my first structures were color printouts on foam core…)
And remember, no matter what some people may post, this hobby has NO right and wrong answers, only different ones. Welcome!
Ask questions and more questions - you can never know too much. I have been working on my layout for 7 years or so and have made many mistakes - have often said that if I knew when I started what I know now, I would have saved a good bit of time as well as money. I started with a Bachmann set with EZ track and after expanding the layout using more EZ track, I finally went to Atlas flex track with better results - this is just one example of what you can get into with a set and little or no background. Good luck and happy railroading!!
I started with an early N gage set in 1969 that had a semi-decent loco (Rivirosi UP C liner). In order to get away from the around and around circle, I also bought some flex track and a couple of switches and quickly had a decent little layout. Since then I’ve purchased around 50 good quality locos (Atlas, Kato, Spectrum, etc) and lots more track. I don’t think I would have kept at it unless I had started with a set, cause it gave me the instant gratification needed to see how cool it was, and the desire to expand…
This hobby has a lot of front-end loading…there is a lot of excitement, energy, and impatience to get on with a purchase or four, and to get to playing with trains as soon as possible. It sure is great while it lasts, but then the tiny, niggling realities begin to impose themselves.
I would urge you to buy individual pieces, and never the first time you identify them…unless you know it is one of a kind and a do-or-die thing. If you look just a bit further, including on line at etailers, you can save a passle of money. Money that could go to better turnouts, for example, or another bag of scenic ground foam or five, maybe some nicer rolling stock with the proper Kadee couplers. Patience, learning, asking questions here and elsewhere, they all go a long way toward satisfaction.
Individual pieces is the way to go in many cases…but not all. Really it is up to you to identify your needs, and then convince yourself one way or another that what is available in a “set” meets your needs or exceeds them. Too many of us found out too late that the sets just don’t have the items that you eventually realize are the correct ones, better ones, nicer looking, more durable…the list goes on.
On last bit of advice. Please, do yourself a huge favour and investigate Digital Command Control (DCC), and a good place to start when you have a solid 30 minutes to spare is at Tony’s Train Exchange on the www. Find his DCC tutorial and get familiar with it. DCC opens up some avenues that DC, for the most part, doesn’t have to offer except with complicated systems. Note that one of our recently joined members is Atlantic Central who has figured out, apparently, how to make DC operations highly realistic and comparable in many respects to DCC. He may pop in here.
Good luck. Keep the credit card or check book in a dark safe place for the ti
Welcome to a great hobby. I would say to go with the set first. Start small. Once you get comfortable with that, you can upgrade. Once you get as big as you want, thats when you stop. Mold it around yourself. Try to have fun. That’s what the hobby is about. Making small towns that you can run.
Peace
I just started the hobby with my son.I picked up a set for him as a Christmas present. We are now two months into it and have expanded the set which resulting in buying new track and a better power pack. The track and power pack from the set made their way back into the box. We are hunting for specific cars and locomotives to build a railroad that represents the trains from my hometown area, which are different from the ones in the set. It was easy to introduce my son to the hobby with a set as well as getting buy-in from my wife but in looking back, I would have preferred to have gone with the individual pieces.
After reading all the reply I would say you have received a lot of good advice. The only thing I care to add is another place to find deals on products would be local train shows.
SET
I started with a set and it has made all the difference. I started with the Bachmann E-Z track set that had one loco, one dummy loco, and 6-7 cars. I got mine at Christmas so i also got a few turnouts with it along with some straight and curved sections. That was enough track to do a oval with a couple of sidings. What is great about the E-Z track is you can constantly change the track plan without having to pull up the track from the raodbed. The plastic road bed also elevates the track off the floor if you run it on the floor. And what people said above about the power pack not sending enough power to the track, well that won’t happen if you end up having a small layout like mine(3X6 foot). My [2c].
tim
What scale are you planning to do? (we’re n-scale btw) Nik (my son) was a train-kid from somewhere between conception and 1 yr old. Not sure where he got the gene (or how he passed it back to me). The sets are great for starters. When it was time to move from wooden trains to electrics, I got Nik (us) a Kato starter set. Kato makes nice starer stes with quality trains that you can migrate forward. The track too, is good stuff. Kato also makes expansion track packs, and provides a booklet on how to combine these sets to do a variety of layouts. Interestingly, most times the track sets are cheaper than the piece parts- including parts you don’t need. The kato track has made a semi-permanent home on the dining room table. Our 1st layout was a hollow core door. We’re in the process of designing & building an “around the walls” layout. We’ve also jumped into DCC, and wishing we’d done that years ago. So our 2-cents: Get a GOOD starter set to start playing. Get pieces as you need them. If you’re into it, get into DCC before you’re staring at 70 locos to convert. Buy locos that are “DCC ready”. And if you start building something more permanent- get the track down & wired first, and scenic later, otherwise you’ll end up with this pile of foamboard and parts for years, and not having alot of fun 
sorry about the run on post. Forgot that this site doesn’t like the Safari web browser
However, my [2c] is NEVER operate your layout on the floor. What was once a dust bunny now becomes a major electrical or worse mechanical problem binding up your locos and rolling stock. Heaven forbid you actually STEP on something (other than the floor).
Plus I have enough trouble keeping the cat off the layout when it’s 48" above the floor. I’d hate to have to contend with Dogzilla, too.
One kinda neat thing out there is the World’s Greatest Hobby DVD. It shows you how to build a complete railroad, including some very nice scenery. It does use a starter set, though. That’s ok, unless you plan on expanding. I would see if you can locate that DVD as it gives some very useful tips. And then rather than using the given set, build it using scratch track and cork roadbed, or similar (your local hobby shop can help with that). That way you can expand the layout and you won’t be tied to a particular brand of starter snap-together track. And then take some of the other advice in these replies and get a nice (but not the nicest) locomotive and a few cars. That’ll be a great start! My $0.02.
I wasn’t implieing that you should run them on the floor.
tim
And I didn’t mean to imply that you were. But we are talking about someone new to the hobby. I didn’t want him picking up bad habits by misinterpreting what was being said. Sorry.