Howdy-
My name's John and I'm new on this site-- first post here! My son was born last year and this past Christmas was his first. Naturally, being my kid, he had to have a train. After considering many inputs (mostly from my wife who was strongly pushing HO or O gauge, even though she doesn't know anything about them) I chose G, which of course annoyed her because she was rooting for HO or O. Since this is my kid's first train and he'll have lots of years of little fingers, I figured the best thing to do was get him one of those Bachmann starter sets-- the Pennsylvanian-- even though I myself was busy droolings over the G-scale versions of GG1's, K4's, full-length heavyweight passenger cars, and generally wishing I was a gazillionaire so I could actually afford all that stuff... So I bought the Bachmann starter kit as (I hope) a good compromise, and if it breaks-- eh, wasn't that expensive really.
So Christmas came and went, and to my relief (I had been slightly worried, he's only 8-months old) he loves watching the train go round and my wife admitted that she liked the scale once she actually saw it set up, so all's well in tinsel-town. Then I got on ebay to see what other G-scale stuff I could get-- especially track. I know Bachmann track isn't the greatest or the best-looking, but again, I'm letting myself be guided by the "little fingers" principle and looking at stuff that will get my family solidly entrenched into G-scale, let my kid grow up playing with trains-- and then when he's old enough, start upgrading to better stuff. Cheaper that way too. So I bought some more track on ebay. That allowed me to alter the course a little to make it slightly more interesting than watching it go round-and-round in circles. I figured my wife would have something to say-- but she was surprisingly cool about it. All she said was "if you get to spend money on your hobby, I want to buy a $3500 Bernina sewing machine". (Gulp! ... Okay, seems fair...) Fortunately I'm not certain if she actually meant it.
So the new trackage was nice. Its fun to watch the train undulate its way around the Christmas tree (by official decree, "when it comes down, the trains get put away"... I'm thinking of having the tree bronzed...) and I got to thinking-- you know I wish I had a few more cars so the train would be a bit longer-- wonder if I could get away with that...? So I combed ebay and secretly got some more cars-- a couple of hopper cars and a boxcar. That's all I need. Really. I can quit this at any time. Meanwhile I spotted a number of other "good deals" on ebay and you know, it would be a real shame to pass all of those up. I'm going to be getting more track and rolling-stock eventually anyway... So I got another boxcar-- then another-- then a caboose and another locomotive, and some more boxcars and yet another locomotive-- and while I was sitting there winning the auctions-- my wife comes over to see what I'm doing (Yikes!) However, to my puzzlement and relief, she didn't say anything and even remarked that some of the trains I was looking at were "pretty"-- I'm no fool, I made sure to purchase those too -- Then she looked at me and said "All this is getting put away next weekend, right?" (Yeah, sure dear, whatever you say...) We're getting ready to buy a new house soon-- I'm already thinking ahead about big rooms, dimensions, track plans, etc. I'm pretty sure she's not enthusiastic about the trains and all, but so far she's been surprisingly cool about it. I'm gonna have to do something nice for that girl.
Anyway-- all this has gotten my railroading juices going and I've been mulling over ideas for building the layout. It will almost certainly be an indoor layout and in a relatively large space. I anticipate something in the neighborhood of at least 24x16 or thereabouts. More if I can figure out a way to commandeer the garage as well-- if not for actual train running, then I'm thinking at least for staging and storage. So after I negotiate with my wife and get all the track warrants and such ironed-out... I've been thinking about possibly building something like an indoor "flower bed" and using real 1:1 scale dirt and minature plants for foliage. I know that's not exactly new in this scale, but I haven't seen many indoor examples combining trains and live plants. Immediately my "murphey meter" is going off and I'm wondering what the various problems and issues would be with that.
1. Would it actually look good? Or would it be better to just use traditional scenery modelling methods instead?
2. What sort of problems might I encounter with that? Off the cuff I'm thinking weight, the possibility of moisture/fungus/whatever from the plants? Dirt in general (after all there is at least one kid already involved-- two if you count me as well
Drainage--?
3. How to build it and lay track?
4. When it comes time to actually build the layout, I think I'd like to hand-lay the track, even though the thought of this sounds really tedious and I've never done it before. Where can I get the actual rails? I know about flex-track, but where can I get just the rails? Does anybody recommend or not recommend this?
5. My thought is to try to "build-up" the contours a bit-- build it more like a traditional layout with risers and such and just enclose it in a box for the dirt and plants. Perhaps use sheet insulation to add bulk and cut down on the amount of actual dirt needed and the weight.
6. Are there any issues involved in working with dirt and trains (aside from being careful not to get the dirt into the working parts)? What about erosion from watering the plants? What plants work well for ground cover-- moss? Something else?
What other issues or considerations might there be that I'm not thinking of? I'd sure love to hear from anybody that has an opinion or experience with any of this.
My name's John and I'm new on this site-- first post here! My son was born last year and this past Christmas was his first. Naturally, being my kid, he had to have a train. After considering many inputs (mostly from my wife who was strongly pushing HO or O gauge, even though she doesn't know anything about them) I chose G, which of course annoyed her because she was rooting for HO or O. Since this is my kid's first train and he'll have lots of years of little fingers, I figured the best thing to do was get him one of those Bachmann starter sets-- the Pennsylvanian-- even though I myself was busy droolings over the G-scale versions of GG1's, K4's, full-length heavyweight passenger cars, and generally wishing I was a gazillionaire so I could actually afford all that stuff... So I bought the Bachmann starter kit as (I hope) a good compromise, and if it breaks-- eh, wasn't that expensive really.
So Christmas came and went, and to my relief (I had been slightly worried, he's only 8-months old) he loves watching the train go round and my wife admitted that she liked the scale once she actually saw it set up, so all's well in tinsel-town. Then I got on ebay to see what other G-scale stuff I could get-- especially track. I know Bachmann track isn't the greatest or the best-looking, but again, I'm letting myself be guided by the "little fingers" principle and looking at stuff that will get my family solidly entrenched into G-scale, let my kid grow up playing with trains-- and then when he's old enough, start upgrading to better stuff. Cheaper that way too. So I bought some more track on ebay. That allowed me to alter the course a little to make it slightly more interesting than watching it go round-and-round in circles. I figured my wife would have something to say-- but she was surprisingly cool about it. All she said was "if you get to spend money on your hobby, I want to buy a $3500 Bernina sewing machine". (Gulp! ... Okay, seems fair...) Fortunately I'm not certain if she actually meant it.
So the new trackage was nice. Its fun to watch the train undulate its way around the Christmas tree (by official decree, "when it comes down, the trains get put away"... I'm thinking of having the tree bronzed...) and I got to thinking-- you know I wish I had a few more cars so the train would be a bit longer-- wonder if I could get away with that...? So I combed ebay and secretly got some more cars-- a couple of hopper cars and a boxcar. That's all I need. Really. I can quit this at any time. Meanwhile I spotted a number of other "good deals" on ebay and you know, it would be a real shame to pass all of those up. I'm going to be getting more track and rolling-stock eventually anyway... So I got another boxcar-- then another-- then a caboose and another locomotive, and some more boxcars and yet another locomotive-- and while I was sitting there winning the auctions-- my wife comes over to see what I'm doing (Yikes!) However, to my puzzlement and relief, she didn't say anything and even remarked that some of the trains I was looking at were "pretty"-- I'm no fool, I made sure to purchase those too -- Then she looked at me and said "All this is getting put away next weekend, right?" (Yeah, sure dear, whatever you say...) We're getting ready to buy a new house soon-- I'm already thinking ahead about big rooms, dimensions, track plans, etc. I'm pretty sure she's not enthusiastic about the trains and all, but so far she's been surprisingly cool about it. I'm gonna have to do something nice for that girl.
Anyway-- all this has gotten my railroading juices going and I've been mulling over ideas for building the layout. It will almost certainly be an indoor layout and in a relatively large space. I anticipate something in the neighborhood of at least 24x16 or thereabouts. More if I can figure out a way to commandeer the garage as well-- if not for actual train running, then I'm thinking at least for staging and storage. So after I negotiate with my wife and get all the track warrants and such ironed-out... I've been thinking about possibly building something like an indoor "flower bed" and using real 1:1 scale dirt and minature plants for foliage. I know that's not exactly new in this scale, but I haven't seen many indoor examples combining trains and live plants. Immediately my "murphey meter" is going off and I'm wondering what the various problems and issues would be with that.
1. Would it actually look good? Or would it be better to just use traditional scenery modelling methods instead?
2. What sort of problems might I encounter with that? Off the cuff I'm thinking weight, the possibility of moisture/fungus/whatever from the plants? Dirt in general (after all there is at least one kid already involved-- two if you count me as well
Drainage--?3. How to build it and lay track?
4. When it comes time to actually build the layout, I think I'd like to hand-lay the track, even though the thought of this sounds really tedious and I've never done it before. Where can I get the actual rails? I know about flex-track, but where can I get just the rails? Does anybody recommend or not recommend this?
5. My thought is to try to "build-up" the contours a bit-- build it more like a traditional layout with risers and such and just enclose it in a box for the dirt and plants. Perhaps use sheet insulation to add bulk and cut down on the amount of actual dirt needed and the weight.
6. Are there any issues involved in working with dirt and trains (aside from being careful not to get the dirt into the working parts)? What about erosion from watering the plants? What plants work well for ground cover-- moss? Something else?
What other issues or considerations might there be that I'm not thinking of? I'd sure love to hear from anybody that has an opinion or experience with any of this.
