New member from South Florida here. Just revived my teenage hobby during the Covid shutdown. Unbelievable the changes in model railroading over the years. I just built my first layout in about 60 years and decided to jump right into DCC. I was going to use N scale, but realized I had gotten "old", and my fingers had problems with the size. So, it's ho4me. Hopefully, I can get some helpful hints from this forum.
@ho4me Welcome to the forum! There are plenty of knowledgeable and quite helpful people (and possibly a moose) here, so do feel free to ask them any and all questions that you may. What era and location are you modeling? Will there be steam locomotives? Don't be shy about posting photos!
Thanks for the welcome. Not modeling any particular era or location. I like to run trains, so I started laying track, and created my town around that as I went along. Spent too many years raising a family and working, and this is my first attempt in about 60 years. I have a 4' x 10' layout in half of my garage. My wife won't take her car out so I can use the entire area, so I live with what I have for awhile. Most of my buildings are card stock designed and printed with Model Builder software on my computer. I am near completion of my first layout, and will dismantle it to begin a whole new layout. Right now I am learning the specifics of the DCC locos and the decoders. I still have a bit of confusion with the CV's. I attached a photo.
Very nice layout, and your building don't look like card stock. Amazing work you have there. Most important thing, have fun! Might want to make a thread just for you layout so we can see more pictures and the design of the next version since you said you are going to start over again. What you have looks awesome.
Thanks in2tech. I only have four plastic structures, plus the oil tanks, on the layout. Because of all the new things available since my last venture into this, I tried out a lot of items to see what I liked and didn't like. All the remaining structures are #160 lb card stock. I like to take photos of actual buildings, and personalize them using the Model Builders software. I haven't decided on a track design for the new layout yet, as I only have a 4' x 10' base board and find it limiting in what I can do because I enjoy running multiple trains. I am currently working on that using SCARM software. It will take a little time, and unfortunately at 84, time is not on my side so I have to keep moving along. Once we get rid of our second car, I will have a lot more room in the garage to expand the layout.
@ho4me Still hope you start a thread just for this layout and show us some more pictures of it. I especially like the area in front of the building with the center grass, trees, and I guess cobble stone street? Looks cool!
Welcome ho4me! Lots of good people with lots of good info here for sure. Looks as though you've got a great start already, looking forward to photos of more!
Thanks for all your comments. I have attached a couple photos of my first layout as requested. I am not too "arty", so I only have a small cliff configuration included, as my first mountains were terrible when painted. I am now working with plaster strips and foam to master the construction of mountains. I won't tell you what sort of pile my first attempts looked like. I am also working with reverse loops trying to learn the requirements for my next layout. This layout only has a couple plastic kit structures. The Shell station, main railway station, the small mall in the center, and the kit-bashed oil depot. I thought the Walther working oil pump was cool, so I had to have that. They are all pretty nice, but I think I will do more personalized structures next time around. As I said previously, all the rest is pretty much card stock structures. The trains are really what it's all about. Because of my limited curve radius, I went with the old Con-Cor 72' passenger cars that everyone warned me about. I rebuilt all of them practically from scratch with new couplers, trucks, whitened out the windows to block the strange inner structures. I bought everything on EBay really cheap, but they turned out looking fairly nice. Any advice or helpful hints would be gratefully accepted.
