General Question

[Balrog21]

Wow, seems like the boards are a little light the past few days. Anywho, I have a question and am rather curious.

What made you pick the gauge you are running on your layout and what is it?

I chose HO becuase I think it's the most realistic looking of the gauges and it provides me with a moderate challenge in the hobby.

[CNE Runner]

Bal - Most forums get "a little light" as we move towards the better weather. I'm sure the foot traffic diminishes greatly at your LHS during the warmer months. I guess there are other 'pursuits' to occupy our time and model railroading takes a backseat.

Secondly, this forum tends to be manufacturer specific (Bachmann) and may have greater appeal to the new modeler. This is definitely not to say there aren't very talented, experienced hobbyists contributing to the good of all...just that there are other forums that are 'pitched' at the experienced modeler and address their concerns.

I model in HO and am an acolyte of Carl Arendt's genre of mini layouts. I built the Monks Island Railway several years ago; and over the years have doubled its size (although it still only measures 15" x 10'). My only operational locomotive is the Bachmann Spectrum GE 45-Ton (the layout is operated with DCC).

Below please find a picture of my 'critter' doing its daily chores:

To be honest, I explored the On30 facet of our hobby - acquiring the Bachmann Davenport and a ventilated boxcar. After careful consideration, I came to the realization that On30 took up too much space for my needs. The Davenport will be extensively weathered and detailed...but may remain a 'shelf queen'.

Regards,
Ray

[jward]

i have shifte back and forth betwen n scale and ho over the years. i like the fact you can build real mountains in n scale, but the contact problems and lack of a decent speed curve keep drivi9ng me away, along with the fact that i have to convert anything i buy to body mounted couplers.

i prefer ho because the locomotives run very well, and because of their weight most contact problems disappear. it is a good compromise between the larger scales, where i wouldn't have much of a layout, and n scale with the previously stated problems.

[Desertdweller]

Yes, it's almost spring and I'm already getting my boat ready!

But I'm also doing a track project (putting in a long siding).  Model railroading for me is a year-round activity.

I have been an N-scale modeler since 1978.  For ten years prior to that, I was in HO.

I was starting a family and paying off college loans.  The cost of the HO items was not the problem.  The problem was not being able to afford housing with enough extra space to build an HO railroad.

Eventually, I wound up renting a duplex with enough room for only a shelf layout, short and narrow.  A friend suggested I build a copy of John Allen's "Timesaver" switching railroad.  I did this, and found the design totally unsuited for the style of railroading I was interested in.  The track arrangement was designed to be a challenging puzzle to work: short switchbacks and run-around tracks, the need to make facing-point switching moves.  This is why it is called a "Timesaver".  It eats time.

I built the railroad anyway, and found it to be hopelessly frustrating and boring.  Some people no doubt would like that as an interesting challenge.  I did find it fun to build.

I needed to run line-haul trains with big power.  The only way I had a chance to do this was with N-scale.

A funny thing happened next.  I built a small N-scale railroad based on David Winter's "Winter Park Regional Railroad".  This railroad was small enough to fit into a small dwelling, but big enough to allow my style of operation.  This railroad (The West Central Nebraska) served me for the next 28 years, winding up, appropriately, in West Central Nebraska.  It also survived ( due to its small size) several thousand miles of moves: Minnesota-South Dakota-Texas-Mississippi-Nebraska.

And I really got to prefer N-scale to HO.

After 28 years of WCN, enough was enough.  I was now living in my own house with plenty of room.  I built a fairly large N-scale railroad, featuring passenger operation in the 1960's.  I have enough room for HO, but with 30+ years of collecting N-scale passenger equipment, I now have a place to run these.

I later found out the previous owner of the house had built an HO railroad in the same room occupied by my N-scale railroad.

Les   

[Nathan]

Over the years I have changed my Primary Scale many times.  I started in HO.  Added and dropped TT.  At one time I had matching ore trains in HO, O and N.  Dropped the HO and N, stayed with O and played a little in S.  Started Large Scale, dropped the O and S.  Have added Z Scale while keeping Large Scale as my primary.  Have had standard gauge, narrow gauge, and some traction /trolleys over the years.

All of the scales have there strong points.  HO has at the present time the largest number of modelers and the lowest cost for the space.

I enjoy Large scale because at train shows the kids can see the trains and enjoy them without have to be lifted up.  I run them on the floor on simple loops.  The larger speaker space in Large Scale makes for great sound.

As long as your having fun with Model Railroading, that's all that counts!

Nathan

[rbryce1]

When I was in grade school, we (our family) got our start in O scale with a Lionel Christmas layout.  It was large, 8'x16' and in 3 levels (not layers) in our basement.  The boy who lived across the street had an HO set in their attic, and I started fooling around with HO on my own in our attic.  That was in the days of laying your own roadbed and rails with individual ties and spikes, build your own rolling stock and engines with rubber bands.  Sure wouldn't pull much!  I remember how much I was amazed when I saw my first gear powered steam engine, a 4-6-4 Hudson.  That thing pulled the entire planet up a mountain, at least I thought so at the time.  

I have been in HO since then, and many times thought of looking towards N scale, but it just didn't seem to have the detail I liked.  I could certainly have fit much more into the same area, but it always came back to the detail.

So, now that I have retired from the Navy (23 years ago) and moved back to Florida, I am still in HO.  Smaller layouts now that I am living in Florida (no attics or basements), but I concentrate on a lot of scenery and try to use it to conceal most of the track, so when you look at my railroad, you see a lot of highly detailed scenery, and then, all of a sudden, a train flies through it.

[Johnson Bar Jeff]

I'm in HO because that was the scale of the train set my grandparents bought me one Christmas when I was barely out of diapers--and in short while I'll be 55 years old. 

I expressed an interest in N in its early days but had some very bad experiences with engines that ran for a year and then died--or ran for even less than a year and died--so I never got into N.

Over the past few years I've expanded, slightly, in the "up-scale" direction    by acquiring a few pieced of rolling stock in On30 and O, but HO remains my primary focus.

[Piyer]

Frankly, I think nothing tops the realism of P-scale, but few of us have room for 1:1 scale trains in our homes.

The older I get, the smaller the trains have gotten. I "modeled" with Lionel from age 3 to age 12 with my uncle's trains from the 1950s. Then I discovered Model Railroader magazine... through my teens and twenties I modeled in HO because it was the most common scale with the most to offer from the shops I could visit. Took a break for about a decade, largely because I couldn't fit an HO scale layout into my tiny NYC apartment. Still can't, but my interests have changed thanks to the internet.

Two years ago I got back into the hobby with N-scale. I was originally thinking of going over to a British prototype because of their branchline terminus layouts with fiddle yards. It seemed a good fit for an apartment. But then I rediscovered Iain Rice's Peterboro, NH, plans in the 2000 edition of Model Railroad Planning. I can pretty much model the railroad facilities in that town full size (roughly 500' x 650') in N-scale with the room I have available. This decision cemented the switch from HO to N.

Now, if I had a choice... or, rather, if I had the money and the space to do it... I think I would model in O-scale (two-rail) and probably build a railroad based on Frank Ellison's Delta Lines, but using more recent trains of thought when it comes to layout design. Instead of a "bowl of spaghetti" plan, I would do it as a linear walk-around plan, incorporate staging yards at the ends / interchanges, and more strongly tie its southern end to the actual routes through New Orleans - which is where Frank lived. Sadly, even his house is now gone, destroyed in the Hurricane Katerina flooding, as I understand it.

[jbrock27]

HO for me.  I like the detail you get with the scale and the size is fairly easy to me to work with.  A huge variety of choices in locos and rolling stock.  And I am sure that being first introduced to HO has a lot to do with my choice.