From my point of view, the most important point is to allow your son to have an input. He will not care much about the type of track you use or whether you use DC or DCC. However, I might give him some choices regarding the selection of a locomotive or cars. When we started, I had a West Texas desert-themed Santa Fe layout in mind. Now the layout looks like West Texas and we have mostly Santa Fe rolling stock, but occasionally a German ICE train can be spotted - my son’s “investment” of some Christmas gifts.
We started when my son was five, with an 8x4 with a single loop, a siding, and a spur. Atlas True Track, DCC. He was able to run the train and switch cars on his own without any supervision. In our case, we soon discovered that this was not enough, especially as he often asked me to play with him, and a year later I expanded it to two independent, but connected loops with an additional long siding. Thus, we could run three trains at the same time.
My son had the most fun when the layout was half-finished, when the tracks and the basic landscape (i.e. mountains, tunnels) were in place, but beyond that he had an open playground to move houses and vehicles around or to load and unload freight cars. At that point, also my daughter, two years younger than my son, got involved. She did not care much about trains, but was fascinated by the “little people”, (mostly) Preiser figures. There were hours when both kids played on the layout without any trains moving.
In my son’s case, the interest in our layout lasted for about 10 years (now it is mine!!!). He still remembers this time fondly (he is now 22). Last Christmas, he even ran a train for half an hour.
A bit on my own background might give you some stuff to ponder.
My first proper model train set was a gift from my parents one Christmas, a Bachmann DCC starter kit along with a SP Daylight also from Bachmann. The first pitfall encountered was I didn’t have a piece of EZ-Track able to fit the big 4-8-4, so I had to go out and buy additional pieces to run the engine on a curve that could fit it.
Once that was sorted, I went on to buying a 4’x8’ board to plop a layout on, and had it set up as a loop to start with, but I discovered an issue, that even though I was in my later teens (and am 6’ 3" tall") I was struggling to reach into the center of the board, and get to everything on it, even without any scenery, and it also ate up a lot of the floor space in my spare room. I later read Byron Henderson’s post on the pitfalls of a 4’ x 8’ and decided it was not for me (https://www.layoutvision.com/why-waste-the-space-on-a-4x8). My first layout then ended up in a dumpster, as basically a board since I never laid any permanent track on it.
My second layout then was a modern shelf layout, meant for switching. I laid the track, and discovered my struggles with soldering (that continue to this day), and it became the home for my burgeoning HO collection. I powered it with a DCC system from NCE, since it was more adequate than my Bachmann starter one; and it ran decently well even though it was sloppy and a bit of a mess. This layout is still intact, but it remains unfinished since due to its large size I was turned off from it; yes it offers plenty of room for switching and running cars and takes up minimal floor space since it runs along the wall as a shelf… but its still in a semi-permanent “to be completed… someday” state as I keep pushing back finishing it due to lack of motivation.
My third layout was just a Free-Mo style module, with a
To start, I would suggest that he use tracks with roadbed. He can play with these tracks by assembling and disassembling them. Atlas, Bachmann, Lionel make these tracks. For a 4’ by 8’ table, they would not be too expensive.
I was about eight or ten when I told my parents that I wanted a train for christmas. I had in mind a wooden train with a string that you could pull along the floor.
What I gor was an American Flyer train set with a steam locomotive a few freight cars and a caboose. Interesting, but a little dissapointing! All it would dio is follow the tracks. And there were no passenger cars. (I am a LION, and passengers are tasty)
Back in those days the LIRR still had steam engines, but non on our line which was fully electric. Electric passenger cars with no engines needed!
Well anyway, 60 years later, here I am living in a monastery in North Dakota, and no passenger trains call here.
Oh well, I built a fantastic layout filling up an entire classroom on three levels of track. I have 14 scale miles of tracks, and it takes 20 minutes for a tyrain to navigate the layout. Fortunately, I run subway trains, and ten trains can run all at once.
NOW they WILL go wherever my imagination wants them to go!
Wow, Thnak you all for the responses. I have many more questions from all of these posts.
I am spending some time researching these links and suggestions but will be back with more questions soon!
For now here is an update:
We opened the track and put it together. I thought my fingers would break trying to put together the EZ track…it was not easy and my son can not manage clicking it together on his own at all.
It has been 1 week and he is already bored. He plays with it daily so I know he still has interest in it but the basic oval shape is just to simple for him. It’s already time to grow.
I will be back with more questions after a few late nights of reading and researching. My son does make all the final decisions as this is his track and he is putting 50/50 investment into them. But I need to research and narrow things down within the ideas he gives as well as the idvice I find here
Are you aware that there is a track plan data base on this website? To find it, look under ‘How To’ when you first got to the website (before you go to ‘Community’ to see the forums).
The Track Plan data base allows you to select various layout sizes. Click on the ‘Small Layout’ option and look for 4’ x 8’ track plans. This is one example that might give you some ideas. It actually has two levels which will make things more interesting:
Note that, unless you are a subscriber, you can only look at six plans so I would suggest that you look through all the small layouts before selecting which ones you want to focus on.
Also note that these plans are often concepts and they may never actually been built or tested. For that reason I would suggest that you study the specifications, like minimum radii for example, before deciding that you want to use a plan as a starting point. Some of the small plans suggest 15" radii curves. Curves that tight will restrict the type of locomotives that can actually negotiate them. You would likely be limited to four axle switchers and 40’ freight cars. Passenger cars might not work at all.
As I suggested in a previous post, you will have to make a decision about what track to use. If the E-Z track isn’t working for you, you might want to cut your losses and opt for something like Atlas or Peco track which is easier to join together, and cheaper than the turnouts for the E-Z track. One advantage to the slightly more expensive Peco track is that the turnouts have locking springs in them so when you flip the turnout to the other route, the point rails will stay in place. You
Great to see another youngster with an interest in trains. Many of the above suggestions while valid are trying to turn him into a model railroader too quickly rather than just letting him explore and grow into the hobby.
I think you are on the right track though. Find a simple plan and go for it. Stay with the Power-Loc track. It is robust, reliable and can be reused for a different plan. When he is ready he can move to big boy modelling.
E Z Track is made by Bachmann, a different manufacturer. E Z Track is different to Power Loc made by Walthers. The two don’t connect although Walthers sells an adapter track that they say will connect to other brands. I looked at those adapters and conclude they connect to only ordinary track joiners.
Bachmann EZ track uses locking tabs that would slide inside Power loc track adapter allowing one pair of ordinary rail joiners to create a connection between the two types should you decide to change to the Bachmann track system.
I agree with bagal. All of the posts have good information and advice but many are rushing the child toward being a real model railroader.
My advice is to abandon the Life-Like PowerLoc track that came with the set. There is not enough variety in the pieces to easily create lots of track designs. And especially if he is having a hard time connecting it. I would stick with the flat 4x8 and get a bunch of sectional track without the road bed, that he can assemble and re-assemble into various track arrangements. From your description it seems like he enjoys that with the wooden trains almost as much as running them.
To this day I keep a huge box of Atlas tracks and a blank 4x8 to experiment with.
Possiby buy him a book with some suggested plans in it that he can enjoy attempting to build. .Something like this, “Atlas Custom Line Layouts” There are at least 5 variations of this book. Not all the layouts will fit into the space but even those have arrangements that can be used as part of the smaller space.
My mother taught me how to “arrange the cars into a train WITHOUT picking them up”. She made me leave the cars on the track like a real train and figure out how to shuffle them on the track to do specific things like "ge
My only comment concerns the use of the word “investment”. I’m pretty sure that you don’t mean investment in the traditional sense. But just in case, please realize that the items you are thinking about purchasing are really toys and are no more an “investment” than a baseball, a bicycle, or a video game player.
