Good sources for N-scale include IMEX (on line search, several distributors...) and the old "LIberty Falls" series (now available at cruizn4sailz.com), These are solid resin-cast, ready to plant. Also, of course, Walthers has many, many by Pola and others, some simply N-scale versions of the same stuff that's in HO.

Railsider

Plasticville is economical. That said, it cuts corners on detail and quality, notably the bright colors that just don't look realistic (see the yellow ladder in the photo sent earlier!).

The answer is the same as for rolling stock: paint, weather and detail. The good news is, plastic takes most paint easily, and there is a lot of molded detail already in place. Tone down that yellow ladder to a real-looking wood tone, or the color that the rail-line paints their stuff, weather it, and it looks pretty good. Add weathering to the sides, paint on a few climbing vines or weeds around the base, glaze those windows inside, and you have a fairly respectable (or disreputable, if that's what you're looking for!) structure.

Railsider

LEDs work quite well for me. Their cardinal virtue is that they "never" need to be replaced! The other virtue is that they produce virtually NO HEAT, and so use very little power.

I've found that the "warm white" or even slightly yellow Christmas-tree strings look most realistic. They are easy to use for village and city scapes. Now's the time to buy them, after the holidays, at second-hand stores, flea markets and yard sales.

If you must cut and solder extensions to reach from one building to the next, be SURE that you maintain polarity -- that is, don't switch the wires. That will kill the system. Snip and replace one wire at a time, so they stay just as they were but longer (it's the radio engineer's "wire-stretcher" in action).

Because LEDs are a point source, you'll want to glaze your windows from inside with "frosted glass" -- I use the pebbled plastic from milk bottles, but you can also frost clear plastic (inside) with fine sandpaper.

Railsider

Yampa Bob.........................

If you cannot find pre-milled plastic or wood (to paint) in that roof pattern, just take smooth aluminum foil, reasonably heavy, and press the grooves in from one side with a wood, plastic or metal object, like a ball-point pen, and a ruler. Work on a slightly soft surface, like a mouse-pad or even a pad of paper, and experiment to find what works best for you. Then turn it over, cut to size, and install on the roof. You can paint (or add "rust") to taste.

Railsider

Here's how you can check the scale of buildings very quickly: Hold up a reliably-scaled human figure to the building's door, and compare them. In fact, if you can figure out how to do it, carry a figure (or figures, if you do more than one scale) in a little pill-holder or something, on your key chain,  so you'll have it whenever you see something in a store or flea-market.

Railsider

I've found over the years that pllastic gl;ue works best on plastic (duh!) and Elmer's [carpenter's] wood glue for actual real natural wood (duh, again). And the best for paper and cardboard is probably rubber cement, although it can be messy, and you need to folow the protocol of letting it dry somewhat (maybe five minutes) before you press the surfaces together. White glue works, but gets lumpy unless you are very, very careful.

Aileen's Tacky Glue, however, is indispensable when you need to glue different materials to one another --- wood to plastic, resin-cast buildings to foam ground, and like that. CA ("Super Glue") is good for tiny stuff, where a dab is all you have room for, and for attaching metal to plastic, say. But I find it's a bear to handle.

Railsider

I believe you are correct when it comes to heavy concrete bridges, and possibly even solid plate bridges. I was thinking of open-work trestles, where there is really no "base" on which to lay down ballast.

Railsider

One has to wonder if there is a market out there for some of the early 19th-century stuff in N scale. Although they would be incredibly tiny, and probably hard to fit a motor into them. The HO De Witt, John Bull & Lafayette almost look like N-scale already! because they were just very little in real life, compared to the big haulers of the Golden Age in the early 20th century.

However, N is gaining on HO in popularity, I think. Any solid figures on that hypothesis?

Railsider

You'll want to reinforce with wood below the track locations. That's where the weight is, and where you need all the stability you can get. Buildings, unless they are solid, aren't a big weight factor. And, yes, 2" pink or blue foam building board is the stuff to get. Bonus: you can poke trees in easily, sculpt for landforms (or glue hills) and paianat with water-based paint (spray will eat the plastic -- test first on a scrap!)

You can, by the way, get some very nice -- but heavy! -- resin-cast N-scale buildings from the Liberty Falls line ... now discontinued, but there is a very good website at cruizn4sailz.com where leftover stock can be picked up very cheap. Houses from the fictional town of Liberty Falls were sold by subscription for several years until the artist died and the company collapsed. LF was a mythical 19th-century town in Colorado, with Victorian homes and shops, and a whole "town history" storyline. Some of the models (designed here and then manufactured in China) are sharper than others, so you should check the photos on the site. Dillard's sold them at Christmas for several years. You can also find them in thrift stores now and then, though they are often damaged.

There are also other lines, quite similar, though no reliable on-line source, such as Norman Rockwell's Main Street, Pueblo Encantado (NM & SoCalif style, only 9 houses, sold in 1994 by Broadway Stores and hard to find) and some others that are a little larger than 1:160 (be careful!).

Most of these have a little "display base" that you'll want to eliminate. But don't try to slice it off. Instead, position it on the foam where you want it, outline the base, carve an indentation about 1/4" or 3/8" deep, and glue it in. Then plaster or scenic up to the edge and paint to match. Some are mounted on polished wood, which you can pry off carefully.

Happy Hunting!

Railsider

Except that the "cow-catcher" is really an American innovation, not found on European trains (of the 19th century when the industry was developing). That's because British and some European trains had fenced rights-of-way. Cows didn't get on the tracks, so there was no need to push them off.

In the USA, on the other hand, "open range" was the paradigm. That's why, for example, the "John Bull" (still available in a Bachmann model set, by the way) had to have a cow-catcher added when it was imported from a British manufacturer, Robert Stephenson, in 1832. The 1837 Lafayette, however, built for B&O in Philadelphia by William Norris (also a Bachmann set), however, has no cow-catcher. Was one added later, or what???

Railsider

If you can figure out how to do it, "ask" the kid. What I mean is, test a Brio wooden set, and if that delights the child, go for it. He will grow into something more complex later.

If, on the other hand, the child gets bored right away playing with a wooden toy set in the store, then step up to the next level.

One of the sneaky things that we old geezers don't want anyone to know about  is that by setting the example of good operating practice, careful handling and intelligent overall responsibility, we are teaching the youngster to be careful, sensible and sane about trains -- and by extension, the rest of life. That's what playing is all about: kids learn how things (including real life) work. As we all do now and then, they make mistakes in judgment, and with the help of us elders, learn from them.

Railsider

Track on trestles and bridges does not have ballast, which is an integral part of EZ track and its look-alikes. But, as explained here, you can modify the ends of EZ track sections so they connect to the ends of a bridge with track either already in place or placed there by you, using standard Atlas or whatever brand you like.

Railsider

After all, there's a reason that Americans call engine drivers (the British term) "engineers" -- they have to deal with problems in a logical and scientific way. The several suggestions made in this thread are really way to approach the problem in just that way. Again, when you solve a problem that way, you feel great about yourself.

Bright Boy, a pink-rubber eraser, or a liquid cleaner -- alcohol, Goo-Gone or Flitz -- are better than abrasives, which not only scar the track and wheels so they get dirtier quicker, but also leave residue that you have to clean. And you clean it with -- yeah -- alcohol, Goo-Gone or Flitz.

There are even track-cleaning cars that will do this for you, sort of semi-automatically ... once you have analysed and determined the problem.

Railsider

Part of the problem may be simply that in the modern day and age, along with all the Walmart Superstores and McDonald's, this society flies and occasionally takes a bus -- but no trains. The era of wide-spread rail travel is, unfortunately, tied in with the past of about half a century ago.

I have toyed with the idea of creating a "universe" in which society developed otherwise, and trains -- albeit modernized -- continue to be the preferred mode of getting from Point A to Point B. Perhaps, to create a storyline, aviation foundered because of too many accidents, or maybe noise pollution proved to be too objectionable, or maybe (like me), everybody got awful earaches and resented the cattle-car aspect of contemporary airline practices -- and oil prices make driving everywhere too expensive as well. Anyway, in this imagined world (a sort of Ray-Bradbury-science-fiction situation, if you will), people still go places by train. Everything else is like it really is today. Or, if your imagination is particularly fertile, you can toss in other "improvements" and make it your universe.

That's the beauty of this wonderful hobby: we can remake the world closer to our hearts' desire, as the poet said, and nobody can stop us from doing it!

Railsider

The steel-rail (black ballast) sectional EZ track has just one virtue: it's cheaper.
On the other hand, the nickel-silver, gray-ballasted track sections (which contain almost no silver, by the way) track is far less prone to rust, and actually a better conductor, but (alas!) costs more. So it's what you use on a quality layout.

Lay black-ballast steel track on unused "display track where running is not an issue. Likewise, use brass track, otherwise worthless, for "show-only" situations (EZ and similar sectional tracjk with plastic roadbed does NOT come in brass, but older-type Atlas-etc. rigid and flextrack does -- or did, anyway, years and years ago and at today's garage sales). Brass track is even more work than steel to keep clean and electrically conductive, but makes nice scenery.

If you want a really nice-looking layout, cover the plastic pebble-grain sectional track ballast with a thin layer of the real thing, or at least paint it to look less like plastic. This way, you can mix the two (nickel-silver where you actually run trains, steel where you don't) without their looking different or strange. Add more weeds on unused sections, of course, and a few stalks here and there for realism, as well as the occasional abandoned tie (square matchstick or toothpick stained) or chunk of old rail (brass, torn from a scrap of flextrack) for effect. A little sulpher or egg-yolk stains brass a nice dirty, rusty color.

Railsider