Layout Tours: Reno 2009

Reno Layout Tours 2009:

 

Happening Friday through Sunday this week around Reno/Sparks/Carson City in Nevada, the 2009 layout tours sponsored by High Sierra Hobbies, could not have had a better fall weekend.  Crisp weather in the 60’s, sun, and lots of model railroad fans out to see the layouts and have fun.

 

Living more than 100 miles from Reno, going to all 3 days was not in the cards.  However, a friend and I did drive up to Reno on Saturday to see layouts, and we managed to fit visits to 6 layouts in.  While I’ll cover each one in separate posts as I go through my photos, I thought I’d share with you one thing from each layout that I liked and intend to incorporate into my own layout.  You’ll remember, I’m just in the early stages of construction, so doing this kind of idea-borrowing is important now.

 

First was a visit to a massive layout under construction by Jim Price.  This massive layout will eventually depict the Southern Pacific from Oakland, CA to Reno, NV.  At the moment, the Oakland area is nearing completion.  Jim and his wife actually live ABOVE the layout.  (I tried, but my wife wouldn’t go for the same idea).  While Jim’s layout is massive, and early in construction, there was still something to learn here.  The picture is of a portable programming track, on top of a case.  There are plugs on one end to attach to a computer running decoder pro.  This setup allows Jim and his crew the ability to program any locomotive, anywhere, anytime, and not have to include a dedicated programming track.  On a small layout, or even on a layout like mine where locomotives will be all over, this idea is something I can see myself borrowing and using.

 

Next, we visited the outdoor layout of Fred Twigge.  This G scale layout is complete and running.  It is a beautiful example of G scale garden railroading, and it is built to do what I feel G scale layouts do best… run.  A three times around design with only two turnouts on the whole layout, makes the need for turnout maintenance minimal.  What could an HO scaler learn from a G scaler?  I learned an important lesson in display of a layout.  You need to have your most reliable locomotive on the track, tested, running, and ready to roll before you open for tours.  While we visited, Fred had to troubleshoot a new locomotive that was going to break in that day.  While he got it running, it showed me again the need for reliable motive power.

 

Now later in the day, more layouts were opening.  Our next stop was Kevin Caldwell’s N scale layout depicting Southern Pacific (and adjacent railroads) in 1984.  This bedroom sized N scale layout is quite well done.  In the middle stages of scenery construction, the code 55 track is beautifully installed.  I was impressed with long run that Kevin managed to get for his trains in a 10×10 bedroom.  The thing I’ll take away from this layout to use myself is the high standards set for the rolling stock.  Kevin has made incredible progress on his layout, and it is noticeable that no freight equipment hits the layout without being properly weathered to his standards.

 

Before lunch, we stopped at Jim Petro’s for a visit to the D&RGW Joint Line.  I’ll have a detailed report on this beautiful layout another day, but Jim has done something that I found amazing with his turnout controls.  As you walk along the layout, the controls are all recessed into the facia of the layout.  This method of installation makes it possible for controls in tight spots to avoid being snagged on clothing of operators.  That is something I will be using on my own layout.

 

After lunch, we visited Charley Lix and his atic-located harbor terminal.  Showing that you can build a railroad in just about any space you have, Charley’s layout demonstrated to me that my plan to have the bottom deck of my 3 deck layout sit at about 30″ from the floor will work as operators sit in chairs.

 

The last visit of the day was to the layout built by three persons in the Kuczynski family.  This nicely sceniced 13×15 layout located in the garage was a great way to cap the day.  The scenery on this layout, done with plaster cloth over packing peanuts, is simply amazing.  It captures the look of the area around Tehachapi that they had hoped to capture.  My learning experience here was the recipe for the rolling hills.  Needing some of that myself, we’ll look at the technique later in a trial I’m planning to do for my own layout.

 

Most of these layouts, and many of the ones I didn’t get to see, will be open for the NMRA Pacific Coast Region convention in Sparks for 2010.  I hope to make return visits and see the progress everyone has made!

 

-Jeremy

PART 2- The Manson Dredging Warehouse in N Scale

Now as you may remember from the First Part of this article, we are using Windows Live lLocal and Google Maps side-by-side to aid in modeling a rather unremarkable, but essential structure for my Richmond Pacific Rail Corp. N scale model railroad. The railroad itself is a 2X4 Switching layout featured in this previous article.

So, now that we’ve built the walls, it’s time for their first layer of paint and a roof!

The Roof over the warehouse is pretty straightforward, Just 0.40 styrene measured and laid onto the angled walls. The ridge of the roof will have a tinfoil cap to make laying the tarpaper easier and make it look more realistic in the end.

Building a hip roof is a completely different challenge though. You could use a lot of geometry to make it completely precise, which I would recommend if you’re capable of such feats, but here’s a simple way to do it.

This first step has you make a sturdy flat roof placed flush with the top of the walls to act as a base for the angular sections. (Note that this method is simple and won’t offer interior roof detail, obviously.) Then I stacked two large pieces of balsa wood and cut the roof angles (usually 25-50 degrees) with my razor saw and then proceeded to the next step.

I then added some large roof trusses and angled them off the main beam to the edges of the walls. The corner posts are VERY tricky and will take some experimentation to get a nice flat posts for the angled roof surface to adhere to.

Next, using thin sheet balsa (I would have preferred to use Basswood sheet, which is not only thinner, but better looking and more realistic) I cut out shapes for the roof.

I then gave the roof a base coat of black to give the scale tarpaper something to adhere to along with the glue and provide some opacity. The final roof color will be a much lighter gray, to match the actual color.

Stay Tuned for Part 3, Tarpaper, Weathering, and Final details.

Building a Structure from SPACE!

Ok, so at least by using a satelite view and an isometric view using Google Earth and Windows Live Local, respectively.

For my Richmond Pacific Rail Corporation layout I needed a scale model of Manson Dredging’s maintenence building to sit on my water front. I’m roughly modeling Lauritzen Channel of which the RPRC railroad servicing facility is on one side and the Manson Dredging company sits on the other.

It’s a fairly unremarkable single story building that has two major parts, a medium sized warehouse portion and the larger storage building attached perpendicularly to the warehouse. (It has the angled hip roof)

Using Google Maps, I got a good clear view of the channel:

Then I went over to Window’s Live Local to get some isometric angular views…

I got these by clicking on the Bird’s eye button.

Since this is N scale, I had to purchase some Gloor craft windows to suit the building, and everything had to be scratchbuilt from evergreen styrene. The horizontal windows are from an HO scale AHM firehouse kit and the steel roll-up doors are from micro engineering, as is the normal doors.

What I didn’t realize until I finished the first wall is that you don’t need to cut holes in the walls for the Micro-Engineering roll up doors! Oh well, It worked just fine anyhow..

After carving out the holes I actually needed for the doors and windows, I built the rest of the wall, remember that the building butts into the medium sized warehouse.

Knowing that I didn’t have to cut holes for the doors, the rol up doors were glued in place without any problems. I still need to add the windows on the other two walls though.

Here’s a view of it sitting on the channel, just like in the satelite photos.

Stay tuned for Part TWO!~

(For those interested in actually following this buildng It’s already complete, so you can follow the build with confidence as I post it!)

Should You Buy a Brass Locomotive?

There’s always that one part of any well stocked hobby shop, it’s probably a glass case behind the cashier’s register, or perhaps it’s a commercial fishtank sized glass case with row upon row of gleaming brass locomotives. Some are unpainted with their meserizing golden-brass hue, some with their meticulously researched and accurately applied paintjobs. What they match in their high detail and impeccable craftsmanship is a price tag that will scare off any sane penny-pinching modeler, but should you be scared off by a high pricetag?

In the Defense of Brass Locomotion

Brass models can provide many things that plastic models have yet to achieve in the 60 years they have inhabited the same part of the hobbyshop. Only recently have plastic models begun to provide affordable, well detailed and accurate competition to brass models, but there are just some things the major manufacturer’s won’t ever make in plastic, and that’s where brass has always held an edge.

For instance, the extremely obscure railroad of the Colorado Springs & Cripple Creek District Railway owned a locomotive identical to the one pictured above, it was apparently built in their shops in 1901, or so the builder’s plate reads. It’s a small and light 2-6-2, and I’d bet the pony and trailing trucks aren’t to distribute firebox weight, but to deal with poor trackwork. The sloped tender suggests a local or switcher locomotive, it ran on coal and sports Carbon-Arc or Kerosene lamps fore and aft. The attractive boiler tube pilot is similar to a road locomotive, but it’s modest footboards at the rear suggest otherwise. This tiny locomotive of an equally tiny and obscure road that barely made ends meet in the quarter century of it’s existance certianly was overshadowed by such fabled neighboring roads as the quixotic Colorado Midland and the much revered DRGW. The only reason this model was produced was probably due to the plans for this little loco being run in a 1974 issue of Model Railroader. The CS&CCD Ry’s story having been enshrined in HO scale brass is one of the reasons why brass is an interesting way to build model locomotives, there’s no chance that would ever be made in plastic by any manufacturer with any degree of sanity.

Because brass locomotives don’t have to worry about the high return on investment that plastic models always have to strive for (think of why in the last 50 years there has been over a dozen models of the Union Pacific 4-8-8-4 big boy, yet there remains only a handful of well-detailed plastic 2-6-0’s 2-6-2’s 2-8-0’s 4-4-0’s and other small steam.) more unique models have been produced to fill in niche markets.

Logging prototypes in both narrow gauge and standard gauge have always been popular brass models. Westside shays and heislers, Uintah 2-6-6-2’s, Baldwin logging 2-8-2T’s, 2-8-2, 2-6-2’s and the wide variety of oddities like the Vulcan duplex, Willamette geared steamer, gypsy winch 0-4-0’s, and the Climax A, B & C models are often found on some of the more involved model railroader’s layouts.

Famous prototypes have also been popular. Southern Pacific Cab Forwards, NYC hudsons, and almost every streamlined locomotive has been produced in brass at one time or another. Smaller locomotives of the larger roads have been popular too, like CB&Q pacifics and Wabash moguls.

Brass is the only way to get some diesels that are too obscure to ever be produced in plastic, like the beautiful Fairbanks-Morse H-20-44’s or the Early EMD TA’s, Baldwin “babyface” cab units, or even small industrial diesels like whitcomb and porter models. SP SD-40T-2’s were popular models in brass for many years until the recent Athearn RTR offering eclipsed the detail of many previous brass offerings. I’m imagining that SD70ACe models are selling quite well as nobody has released one in HO yet.

The quality of the running gear found on the “average” brass locomotive varies wildly so this is where it gets tricky. Some companies were all about the looks and only put a “token” drive inside thinking that the collectors of brass would never run such a highly detailed locomotive as it may hurt the value. These clumsy arrangements often had underpowered open-frame motors flimsily attached with shrink tubing to a poorly built worm-gear assembly like the AT&SF 1950 class locomotive pictured above. This was the most mass-produced brass locomotive ever made, and although the detail is acceptable, it ran terrible. Early Ken Kidder mallets had only the rear set of drivers powered, making them gutless locomotives barely capable of hauling their own weight. Some of the gearing was so poor that it would only be able to attain ridiculously high speeds thanks to a lack of reduction gears. Although not a total loss, they would be worth sending off to an experienced rebuilder of brass like master machinist at DTA Models . (no commercial affilation, but I’m quite impressed with his work.) It seems a great deal of early Japanese brass is like this.

On the other side of the spectrum is the newer Korean brass, like my CS&CCD 2-6-2. It’s built by Ajin precision of Korea and has a fantastic drive train. Featuring a sagami can motor, it has solid driveshafts linked to sturdy machined metal gears with the gear tower solidly attached to the frame. It runs silky smooth. NWSL (NorthWestShortLine) brass has been revered for decades for it’s rock-solid dependable drives and adequate detail. Don’t forget that brass locomotives are heavier and if the drive is solid, they pull much better than a plastic locomotive, especially if the locomotive is small to begin with.

So, should you buy a brass locomotive?

-Yes you should, IF: You’re modeling a really specific prototype or if you absolutely must have an accurate and highly detailed model of a steam or diesel locomotive that would be too difficult to kitbash or scrathbuild. Always comparison shop though, as most brass is expensive, usually more than $300.00 now, with most brass well exceeding this price.

-No you shouldn’t IF: there’s a nice offering in plastic of the same model. It would be a waste of your money. A good example would be a Brass GP7 or SW1500 model, nice detail but unless it was severly modified by the home road (e.g. a unique chopnose like on the WM GP9’s) the Atlas, Proto 2000 or Athearn offering are quite adequate.

A Superdetailed N Scale Layout

At a recent train show I met an excellent modeler, who built everything you see here. He has an amazing eye for detail, and isn’t afraid to kitbash even the most expensive brass locomotive into just what he’s looking for. Gutting Atlas geeps, Intermountain tunnel motors (EMD SD40T-2’s) and completely redetailing them part by part into something really exceptional is his typical way to model. His layout is well-researched and constructed. Although the scenery isn’t completely finished he can teach the average modeler alot about the necessity of important details. He says that “the trick isn’t to put every detail found on the prototype, but certianly enough to make the model unique and recognizable to anyone who might have seen one in person.”

Not only does he kitbash diesels, he also scratchbuilt accurate telephone and electric poles to serve the roundhouse properly. All the vehicles adhere to a late 1980’s time frame and check out some of the smaller details he’s added to the scene.

Here’s a collection of some of his projects, some finished, some in progress. Each has been disassembled and reassembled to ensure that the major modifications would fit just right. On the right, shop trucks were scratchbuilt for when a locomotive’s trucks are removed and the frame needs to move to another portion of the shop. The oil-stained concrete is always a good touch.

A heavily kitbashed Southern Pacific rebuilt GP9E rounds the curve with a loaded ballast hopper.

The locomotives are serviced out back on the garden tracks. the Pit was made just like the real thing, with board-formed concrete.

Another fascination of his is Maintenence of Way equipment, and most of his fleet is scratchbuilt or heavily kitbashed using photographs of ATSF and SP subjects as important reference.

GHQ kits are also a sub-hobby of his, he builds them with all the movable joints and even modifies them as-needed to make them fully posable. N scale vehicle modeling is a pretty exact hobby, and it looks quite impressive when done well.

Open the Floodgates! Pouring the “Water” for your model scenes.

This is one of the intangible “thresholds” of modeling that modelers have to work up the courage to do, because it’s a one-shot-waste scenario. It’s a tense operation pouring what can be awfully expensive water materials on your nicely painted riverbed.

In the two previous articles, we discussed a new way to research the color of a river, and how to prepare the riverbeds for the coming torrent of “water”. And appropriate landforms to compliment your riverbanks.

Options for Water

For water, Woodland Scenic has been selling a horrendously overpriced product called “Realistic Water”which is actually just Acrylic Glazing Liquid used for painting light layers of paint on a painting. Learn more about Acrylic glazing liquid here. You can get this stuff by the GALLON for half the price of the bottle of WS product at Blick Art Supply.

Acryllic Glazing Liquid
Pros:
-Least Expensive! (Less than $10/Gallon!)
-Easy to Pour
-Non-Toxic, Smelly but not noxious
-Water-Soluble
-Dries CLEAR and looks “wet” and like flowing water (more so than other fake water products)
Cons:
-Smelly for 12 hours after poured.
-Takes 24 hours to dry
-Needs containment if riverbed extends off layout
-If you want to pour it deep, it will take many layers due to the fact that it won’t dry at all fast if you pour it deeper than 1/8″ layers.
-Cannot be colored or dyed (It doesn’t matter if you’re pouring your water shallow)
-It flows through the tiniest gaps in the scenery and like water takes the path of least resistance when poured. Make sure you’ve painted your riverbed properly before pouring.

Woodland Scenics Realistic Water is IDENTICAL to Acrylic glazing liquid, Except 4 times more expensive. (approaches $16.00/bottle)

Envirotex
Pros:
-Dries Clear
-can be poured deep (thick layers) forming bodies of water
-Can be colored with dyes
-Looks nice, but dries dead flat and needs waves added in additional layers.
Cons
-PRECISE mixing may be difficult
-Excessive care to deal with bubbles is time-consuming and boring
-Produces a lot of heat from chemical reaction
-Expensive
-Yellows with age (big problem)
-Creates “fillets” (concave meniscus) and creeps up pier pilings, water weeds, Stone abutments and anything sticking above the water. Looks weird and hard to fix. (Joe Fugate remedies this problem in his DVD’s.)

“Magic Water”

With thanks to Mr. Williams of “Magic Water,” we’ve expanded our coverage of the pros and cons of his product.

Pros:

-Looks realistic
-Can be poured to ANY depth without a need to “layer” pours
-Doesn’t melt plastic or foam
-Can be tinted and colored
-Has a much gentler meniscus around objects and the shore.
-No bubbles
-No Yellowing
-No Cracking
-No Shrinkage over time
-Comes with instruction booklet that shows how to model everything from mud puddles to high waterfalls.

Cons

-Toxic
-Resin-Based
-12-24 hour drying time (Not as bad as envirotex!)
-Needs additional layer to create realistic waves
-Will seep into porous plaster scenery and needs to be sealed.

E-Z Water

E-Z Water (Bag of yellow/clear plastic granules)
-Looks enticing for beginner modelers…DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES PURCHASE E-Z WATER!!! It’s a terrible, noxious, yucky, sticky product that ruins cookware, your riverbed and your modeling confidence because every pour will end in failure.
Did I mention that it’s never actually clear? It’s always yellow.

Preparing the River

If not contained on both ends of the riverbed or water feature it can leak in all the nooks and crannys, this is the same for all other water products.

Building a Dam:

To hold back the heavier products like Envirotex, Acrylic Glazing liquid, and Magic Water, you need a dam. I made mine out of metal plates you use for workshop pegboard. These galvanized steel plates are less than $0.50 apiece at any well-stocked hardware store. I drove drywall screws through the holes to hold them in place.

THE MOST IMPORTANT PART TO MAKING THE DAM IS THIS:

You have to take Wax paper or Plastic wrap and seal the side in which the water product is going to sit against to prevent the liquid or resin from spilling all over your floor. THIS HAS TO BE NEARLY WATERTIGHT, as all these products seem to find every nook and cranny just like actual water.

Here’s a photo of the dam in place:

Make sure you have at least a 1/4 to 1/2 an inch over the top of your water surface for safety.

Laying a Riverbed, Step by Step

One of the luxuries you’ll probably have as you build your future riverbed is that you won’t have previous scenery attempts lying in the middle of your project. I had to level out an entire canyon before even starting my river.

Here’s what it looked like BEFORE:

I use a lightweight way to build my hillsides, as covered in Woodland Scenic’s “Scenery Manual” which is basically old newspapers, junk mail etc crumpled up into little balls, taped to the board with 2 layers of plaster cloth and a thick layer of sculptamold atop the plaster cloth. They came down without a fight using a small hacksaw to cut through the plaster cloth.

A great tip I learned to recycle sculptamold is to heat up a large pot of water on the stove, then bring it out to the train room an ladle the hot water atop the sculptamold. The sculptamold turns back to the watery mush it was when you first mixed it, and can be recycled over and over. It even absorbs some of your scenery material like the ground foam and dirt, which adds to texture when you use it for scenery next.

The first part when planning a river that will include any rail or road bridge is to build the right-of-way and get it to a point in which it runs reliably, then begin scenery.

Once the track is laid down, shape your banks surrounding the tracks with care to observe how real rivers create banks. Erosion is typically a large part of the character of a riverbank, and trees are the only barrier to preventing the entire banks from being swept away in a flood. Hard stone outcroppings are also elements that add character to a river.

Looking at the above diagram, one can observe some of the neat features you can add to your river scene to add some more detail.

Other riverbed types would include small stones (don’t use ballast for this) and clay riverbeds.

As you can see in the diagram above, I cover the ENTIRE riverbed in an uneven, but somewhat smooth and thin layer of sculptamold. This makes you river look 100% more natural and gives that neat fast-flowing ripple effect that makes your eye think that the water is actually moving.

This is what the dry riverbed looks like with the layer of sculptamold down and the silty riverbed of decomposed granite in place. Any dirt you apply atop the sculptmold MUST be applied over a layer of FULL-strength white glue to prevent us from having problems when we paint the riverbed next. (It will also create a nice layer between the sculptamold and the acrylic glaze.)

Here’s a closeup of the bridge abutment in place, with low wooden retaining walls on either side to prevent eroding the mainline behind the stone pier.

Using techniques in the PREVIOUS ARTICLE on how to correctly paint your riverbed, we take our paints and paint DIRECTLY on top of the dried dirt. (make sure to use a medium sized 1/2 inch wide disposable paint brush)

In the next article, we’ll cover how to pour the river, it’s easier (and in some ways harder) than you might think.

How to Model a River

Rivers are perhaps the most often modeled item on a railroad next to Depots and Trackside industries. Unfortunately, very few people actually model a river realistically enough to really convince your eye that it actually looks like water. Sure, the glossy surface helps, but it’s also what’s below the waterline that counts most.

Joe Fugate has certianly captured the look of a seasonal creek, with great success. You can follow his progress in his 5 DVD set about his Southern Pacific Siskiyou Lines. I would highly reccomend these sets of DVD’s for anyone wanting to make realistic scenery. (Volumes 4+5 deal with scenery)

For this article, I’ve modified Joe’s methods to produce a wide, shallow river. This type of river can be found anywhere. It typically doesn’t get more than 15 feet deep and has lots of sandbars and silt.

If one looks at the wide variety of rivers across the country, they all have on thing in common: a dominant riverbed color. This varies wildly from the rich oxide reds of Upper Michigan to the Green Swampy mess of the South, from the Clear mountain streams in the mountains to my river, slow, shallow and containing decomposed granite and a bit of clay.

Color Theory.

Color is a make-or-break thing about painting a river. Model railroader has pushed black and sand as the dominant colors for riverbeds, and I disagree with their color assesment for ALL rivers, although the Milwaukee river does in fact have that color grouping.

The Mississippi is predictibly silty with a sandy brown being the dominant color.

The mighty Missouri River is raging in the winter, you can see the difference between the fast-moving winter Mo’ and the levied puddle that once was part of the river.

The somewhat fast moving Susquehana meets up with what seems to be the Juanita creek/river, just north of Harrisburg, PA in a hamlet called Benvenue (no “i” ?)

The Kankakee River is green..

The American River is deeper and faster…

My favorite as far as color is concerned is this one outside Edisto Island in South Carolina.

…Finally we have the River I intend to model mine after, the Salinas River, located in California.

This really gives the modeler ideas to branch out beyond the ultramarine blues and blacks and see what a REAL river looks like.

Next, we’ll discuss how to build a leak-proof riverbed for our water product and discuss how to correctly blend colors together to create the riverbed, then finally, We’ll pour the river and add the bankside vegetation.

I used Windows Live Local’s “Bird’s Eye View” to capture all of those Aerial shots.

Interacting with Miniature Railroading has a NEW look!

I’m pleased to announce the new colorscheme for Interacting with Miniature Railroading! (No, it’s not based on a railroad’s color scheme for those curious minds)

Check out the new banner, a time-lapse photo I look on my model railroad, and you’ll find a few other improvements.

I’m beginning to re-write some of my articles that were a good idea in theory..but weren’t as helpful as you might have wished. The first article that has been throughroly re-vamped is “Micro Layouts are a Blast!”

Next will probably be updated tutorials on how to do stuff, and you’ll see them in the next few weeks among the other new material.

I have made many promises in the past for articles that I never got around to writing, the list is below, and will be a guide to what you’ll be reading on this site in the next few weeks as I tie up these loose ends.

 

If YOU have any suggestions, please leave a comment.

List of future articles:

-Building a Photo Diorama for you model Trains (re-write, new photos)

-Modeling 4 lane concrete roadways (re-write, new photos)

-We build a Pizza-Style Micro Layout (New)

-How to weather: Tank Cars. Livestock cars, Hoppers, Gondolas, Steel boxcars, trussrod boxcars, old passenger cars, streamlined passenger cars, flatcars, Covered hoppers (both grain and cement), cabeese, diesels, and electric locomotives.

-How to weather steam locomotives (a mulit-part series)

-How to model an orange grove using new techniques

-How to detail and scratchbuild a citrus packing house from photographs of the real thing

-More building and structure plans

- N scale structure articles

-A review of the new Bachmann HO GE-45 tonner (with siderods!)

-and more!

What Is the Best Scale for a Christmas Train Set?

Top 5 Christmas Layout Scales (1 being the most ideal)

5. LGB- Garden Scale Fun! At 1:29 scale, G scale will cetianly provide a lot of fun on a large scale. You could even put most gifts on the flatcars and gondolas that come with the starter LGB sets! These trains are extremely durable and even capable of being submerged and continue to run flawlessly.

4. O27 Lionel – You can’t have a classic Christmas without a loop of LIONEL encircling the tree. Although unrealistic in every way from the standpoint of a real model railroader, the kids won’t mind as they take the hefty throttle and crank up the speed on powerful diecast 4-6-4 hudsons or streamlined F3 diesels. The wide range of “action cars” that perform some element of animation only helps to increase the fun exponentially. Their legendary durability also help too.

3. On30 is the perfect comprimise of Playable size, prototype accuracy and colorful family fun. Basically,these O scale narrow gauge trains run on HO gauge track! This adds flexibility and fun, as you can operate both scale on the same loop. Bachmann makes some really impressive and affordable equipment that lasts forever and can be used on more serious layouts in the future. They are also about the same scale (1:48) as those ceramic holiday homes that are so popular. This is the fastest growing portion of the hobby and hundreds of brand-new products are coming out in On30 each year since it was formally introduced in 1997.    

2. Lego Trains- Infinite Creativity in a scale that works out to roughly 1:32, which is close to #1 scale. The rebuidable trains add a lot of holiday fun and I really enjoy playing with these reliable, colorful and fun trains.  

1. HO scale- I may be biased, but this is still the perfect comprimise of Scale, durability, and unlike every other scale listed here, inifinite expandibility. 60 years of product development has made HO the scale richest in variety with literally hundreds of thousands of different products to build and play with. Your youngsters will be able to, should they become interested, actually be able to build a fun and realistic looin model railroad that takes up less space then all the previously mentioned scales without being fragile, like N or Z scale.

Gallery of the Scales