Athearn/roundhouse sells great oldtime cars

Ya 15 inch radius is a little tight

The walthers referance book has a full military section

I'm not sure but athearn or walthers sells military transport type cars

It's definetly possible to get great locos for cheap, my roster of about 20 locos are all high quality and somehow were all on amazing sales. Just spend some time and look around for that barely used loco or even find a nice cheap hobby shop. I'm actualy amazed to think back and realize nothing I own was it's full price.

Athearn RTRs are very nice for they're relatively low cost but I've found they do have a fair bit of noise. But some noises the locos make are sorta realistic but some are just anoying.

Yeah I guess it would, our group seems to be able to do it though but I'm not sure what they do to make it work

Actually I'm pretty sure as long as there's no powered units on the back of your train and the cars are insulated the length doesent matter.

I dont are a speaker enclosure on the diagram so youll have to make one which is somewhat harder. The hardest thing is finding space. Next are you going keep the factory decoder and add a just sound decoder or are you replacing the decoder with a full function sound decoder?

Ok, i dont know much about that loco but does the Exploded diagram show any speaker eclosements?

Is it an atlas loco?

My first layout was a 4 by 8 sitting on a ping ping table and it was a good height when i was young. As i got tired of the small track plan i added a 2 by 8 foot  piece on the back then later added another  1 by 8 foot yard on another side turning it into a decent sized layout. But after some time, a small lyout can get boring especially when it was designed when i was 7. So i spent a month planning a new layout based on the cprails rogers pass. The new plan makes so much better use of the space and im very happy with it. So a but reason i did this was the height. As i got taller the 3 foot or so ping pong table got very short and i enjoy near chest level operating not near leg level so my new layout was built on 5 foot tall saw horse type legs being the layout up to about 5 and a half feet. So you have too decide which height suits you best and think a head on what you might want someday. My biggest thing i would change would be getting rid of all my 19 inch radius curves an making them longer so i can run my longer cars and passenger cars.
Tyler

Yikes sorry to hear about that, how good was the packaging?

Im not sure there is one but theres hundreds of books on what TO do.

I dont believe youve told is if you use DC or DCC.