Hobby: model railways

Factual Questions
1

When I was a kid (about 45 years ago) I wanted a model railway.
But we couldn’t afford one (my parents got me a chess set instead, which worked out pretty well :slight_smile: ).

Now I’m semi-retired and one of my investments is about to mature (= loads of money! :cool: ).
At first, I was going to spend £5,000 ($8,300) on an oval track model railway to fill my large garden shed (hey, a man can dream! :wink: ).

But then I thought - what if I quickly get bored with it? :frowning:

So now I’m thinking - put up a shelf (say 15 feet long) and run a straight track railway along it. This can be done for £500 ($830) - which is what I spend on a new computer every few years.

What is your opinion of my spending plan?

Do you have a model railway?
What Internet sources do you recommend?
What gauge (O, OO, N) do you suggest?
Is DCC control as much fun as they say?

2

I don’t have an opinion on model railways but a museum that I take my daughter to has several on display and it is the meeting place for a model railway club. Every weekend, there’s a handful of modelers there working on things. If I were going to get into it, I’d go hang out with a club like that. You’d see what you like, get tips and advice on how to do things and what not to get.

3

I haven’t had a layout for 30 years, so i have no current sources. You may wish to join a club and talk to members. Clubs often have a club owned track that everyone works on and can run a train on. You can see if it’s an interest to you any longer own a track at home.

4

I built a layout back when I was in high school. Loads of fun.

However, most of the fun was in making it, not running it afterwards. As soon as I finished it I started planning another, more ambitious layout.

5

First, I recommend searching out railroad forums, if you have not already - alas, I do not know any good British Model railway boards, but you could start at General Discussion (Model Railroader) - Model Railroader Magazine - Model Railroading, Model Trains, Reviews, Track Plans, and Forums (I think you can scan the forums if you are not registered, but you cannot post), and also http://www.railroad.net/forums/index.php (this one has a Scale Model Railroad forum, among many other forums) - there are lots more out there of course.
I think smallish, shelf layouts are indeed very popular in the UK (and elsewhere, but the UK is known for it, shelf layouts with well detailed scenes, operations…not as much).
I personally like the build & modeling part more myself, but be aware that there is a large RTR (ready to run) continigent, such that oftentimes kits are hard to find - the model is only available already built (and not always that well built - I loath built up buildings as they are usually not well assembled, with seams, gaps, etc, and are often a pain to paint, weather, kit-bash (reassemble in a different way, say to match a prototype).
And have fun, and make sure you know a lot of good, solid curses for the times a tiny detail parts flies out of your tweezers, defies the law of conventional physics, and dissapears into thin air, never to be found again…)

6

You could always combine trains and another interest…

When I was a kid, I designed a fantasy railway. It would have started out with an interconnection with CN, then gone narrow-gauge into the mountains, where a town would be built on brackets on the mountainside, then there would be another interconnection with a lunar railway, whose vacuum-sealed rolling stock would pass though a tunnel and emerge on the moon’s surface and go to Luna City.

I was never particularly interested in historical accuracy, as most model reailway people seem to be. :slight_smile:

7

All good stuff - thanks!

I live in a small town, so there isn’t a model club nearby. However I’ve discovered that a colleague at work does have a model railway.

I will look for UK forums.

I actually prefer ready-to-run kits - and apparently one standard kit station and a signal box are based on the one in my town!

8

I do N-scale because you can pack a LOT more into the space. HO-scale is bigger and requires more space, but it’s more ubiquitous and usually a little bit cheaper. Easier to deal with as well since it’s not so small. O and G, etc. are really huge, IMO, and way too expensive. I get stuff from e-bay, internettrains.com, and local shops and model train shows.

Your plan is probably good with regard to not spending all that money if you’re afraid you might get bored. The only problem I see is that a straight track is pretty boring (unless you build a yard ladder off it and do switching exercises). I think most people prefer a loop of some kind for continuous running. Adding a couple of turnouts (switches) and a passing track lets you run multiple trains on one loop by shunting them back and forth onto the passing track, which can add quite a bit of interest to a simple loop. If you’re interested in something like HO-scale, you can get a very nice starter track, a locomotive or two, and some freight cars for $500. You’d probably have room for some scenery, etc. in that budget as well. I use and recommend, especially for a start, something like Kato Unitrack for the track (if you’re looking at HO or N). It’s more expensive than buying and assembling regular track pieces and roadbed, but it’s rock-solid reliable. Each track piece is attached to a plastic roadbed (the “gravel” ballast that lifts the track off the ground) and the pieces snap together. See here for an example of a starter set: HO Boxed Track Sets . MSRP is $198, but I’m sure it could be had at ebay or elsewhere for a bit less than that. Then you figure $50-100 for a decent locomotive, and $10-20 or so per freight car (depends largely on what brand, how detailed, etc.). That will give you a pretty decent 4’x8’ starting layout with a loop and a couple of branches to play with to see if it’s interesting to you, and would be a lot better than a straight track. If you like it, then you can spend your money extending from the starter set, adding/building scenery, etc. And if you’re worried about the plastic roadbed looking cheesy if you decide to do serious scenery, plenty of people use it and paint it and/or glue regular model ballast onto it just as if they had built or used a cork roadbed with regular track pieces (check the closeup shots toward the bottom of this page).

Now, if you’re looking at the bigger garden-size scales, or Lionel, something like that, it will be a lot more expensive, take up a lot more room, and likely won’t allow for a bunch of switches, yards, etc. But they are big, and can be very nice to look at, but I don’t know very much about them.

Oh, and a ton of information (and forums) can be found here: http://www.trains.com/mrr/

9

I don’t know much about the subject, but by potential future father-in-law has your second option set up (00 I think, but I’m not too sure - any smaller and it becomes a bit fiddly, IMHO), and is in the process of converting the whole thing to digital (as opposed to analogue). The main advantage of digital, as far as I can gather, is that you can put all the controls (lights, sounds, points, signals, etc.) on one controller.

Why not go with this option to start with - if you get really into it, you can always upgrade to a more expensive layout?

10

Think about what is it about model trains that draws your attention. Historical details, modeling landscape, track layouts, running the train?

I personally like to build impossibly complicated track layouts with tons of switches and crossings and under and over passes. Then I play with them for a while running way too many trains and avoiding collisions. Then it is destroy and rebuild. I hardly bother with landscape.

What works for this kind of use is cheap tracks, small scales, and a huge flat area that I can temporarily clear to set up. (it’s been a while since I have had real model trains but I am currently getting a kick of an irresponsible amount of toy trains from my kid).

The approach you have to modeling will determine what is best for you.

11

Being an American, a lot of my opinions may, or may not, have any relevance to your situation, but IMHO;

Get top-notch equipment to start off with. you’ll appreciate it later, when you have more experience. We, (Amurrikans), consider the Japanese to be the best equipment makers, especially Kato. YMMV. As far a American manufacturers, Atlas, and to a lesser degree, Life-Like, are also good quality, IMHO

Here in the States, HO (1:87, I believe you call it OO), is by far the most popular scale, and thus the manufacturers offer a much wider variety of gear in that scale. You’ll appreciate that later as well.

If I had the money, I’d switch to DCC. Much less fiddling with complicated wiring.
(I have an (ancient) electronics degree and like fiddling with wiring, but you might not.)

Were I you, I’d opt for troub’s suggestion of a Kato starter set. Get enough extra unitrack to build a big loop around the periphery of your shed and run it for a while to see if it holds your interest. If you get sick of it, Kato gear has a good re-sale value.

You could also haunt some of the train forums on the web and see what you might be attracted to. Be advised, opinions expressed on the boards can often achieve the level of acrimony usually reserved for die-hard sports fans. I can personally recommend Trainboard They’re more laid-back than there than many modelers. (For the most part.)

Most importantly, have fun.