10 years ago I gave our spare bedroom over to my wife for her to use for her hobby room after I had had it the first 10 years. Well I'm thinking about getting back into modeling. But need help and suggestions from all you so called experts. I was HO have just a very few left, mostly used as wall decor now. I know space savings is a big reason to go to N but why should I try N? How do I get started? Buy starter set, or just peice it together as I need? Should I go to the local hobby shop or can I get alot better pricing on line someplace, and if online where? How much rollstock is there in RI,Frisco and Amtrak? When I had HO I liked to change my layout qute often because I guess I never really found a good one to keep to. Are there any good designs for small areas out there? I know by now you are shaking your heads and I'm sorry but I feel like a real newbie so treat me like one.
My suggestion would be buy what equipment you need, rather than a set (unless a newer Life-Like or Kato/Microtrains set has the equipment you'd use.). If you want to set up a temporary loop of track to run trains, I'd strongly suggest you use Kato Unitrack. Check your local hobby shop, pricing competitiveness will vary depending on what hobby shops are near you. You can find track planning books at your hobby shop too. While you're there, pick up a Walthers catalog, or if you'd rather not pay $18 for a hard copy, search their site for what locos and rollingstock you're looking for. http://www.walthers.com Keep in mind that N is about half the size of HO, so in HO where you would have a 18 or 22 inch radius to fit inside a 4 foot panel, you can achieve better scale apperance by using a 15-18" radius in N scale, while using less space. If you do the math, 15" radius in N is equivalent to about 28" radius in HO. Good luck, and welcome to N scaling.
Hey don't look at it as starting over in a new scale. Thank of it as an adventure I did about 13 years ago when my then 7 year old traded some H.O. for n-scale. Now I have more N than I could ever had in H.O. and share the room with the computer book shelves and more and I run 25'X15' I am using the module type layout one foot wide by four foot long. You can get a lot of running,switching and yard room in N-scale. There has been a lot of improvements in N-scale and the paint scheme's are out there you just have to look for them. Rock and Frisco are plentiful as well as Amtrak. I favor the Katy myself but Frisco and The Rock are the next runners I have painted both in H.O. and N-scale and it's a lot easier to do. I would suggest you stay with Atlas or Kato on your engines not knowing your era. The Concor's newer versions are not bad and you can get some good Bachmann,as well as Life Like but you can get discouraged with them after awhile and most of the time you can get real good buys on e-bay. Or go to Yahoo Groups and get on some of the sites there they have a couple of forsale groups a lot of N-Scale groups and I have traded for a lot of stuff I wanted. I would say buy what you want to model but start off small and build up learn N-scale like you did H.O. one step at a time and you can still share that bedroom with the wife.If you need to but with the 1'X4' modules you can go around the room and cut back in saving room for other stuff.If you would like more info contact me nasty@par1.net will help you as much as possilbe. Fred
Speaking strictly as an amateur, I would suggest going with the "piece" approach unless a set has multiple items you want. Where to buy: local hobby store. Find one where the guy behind the counter actually does N scale and you'll get good advice before you decide, plus he may help you with Starting a layout: why not look for a club first? I've never built a layout on my own yet, but my local hobbyshop owner led me to an NTrak club (to which he belonged) and the results have been great. I got to run trains right away on a well put together layout, and when I was ready to build my own module there was lots of help and advice on all aspects of the job.
Well I guess one of my first moves would be to check around for a local n-scale club or a general model railroad club. They can be a whole lot of help. The first place to go is to your local hobby shop. They will be able to set you up with what you need, and there will be REAL people to talk to. They might be able to direct you to a local club. Please don't try to do too much, too soon. Take your time and get the feel for things
I have to advocate the N scale route... after years pf drooling over large, elaborate HO scale layouts, reality set in: I could not reasonably do it in HO scale, but probably could in N scale. The fact that you can get twice the modeling in the same amount of space was a draw, as was the detail of N scale such as Micro-trains. I switched 10 years ago and don't regret it. Finding a good N scale club (especially NTrak) is helpful. Harold
