Newbie number 1,476,389! Good to see ya'll

[jetdriver]

Appreciate the hospitality folks! I've been researching as a complete newbie for about a month or so now. Somehow I haven't bought anything yet which has been very tough considering all the goodies available these days. However, I'm a bit on the anal side and want to do it right, or at least educated, the first time. Whats the point of folks prior to me making mistakes and communicating them if I'm not going to learn from them right! Anyway I want to completely plan out everything before I buy my first part......hoping this practice will keep the cost reasonable and eliminate any unnecessary purchases. With that being said Im looking at running an HO scale passenger layout with a very clean look to it. I dont want it to be over complicated and cluttered. I'm going against lots of tables I've seen by keeping a conservative approach initially. We'll see how that goes right! Anyway couple of quick questions if you guys dont mind!

1). Whats the longest (per car) passenger car I can run on a 22" and 18" radius turns using a standard 4x8 homebuilt table (based on simplicity of the build);
2). or I prefer a 5x10 table for the additional space if needed but am waiting on a "building benchwork" book to arrive to research how to build a larger table and use, if available, larger radius turns.

3). I want to start out from the gates with a DCC setup to keep from having to change things up to much later as this technology continues to grow. With that being said, can you guys recommend a good, reasonably priced dcc compatible passenger train setup/locomotive or at least a great online location to get good prices on one?? Also a few brand names would help so when I search on Ebay I can eliminate the cheapies.

Guys I really appreciate the info and apologize for the looong post. Remember your excitement when you first started? Anyway, I wanna do it right with a great foundation to build upon!

Thanks so much!!

 

[CanuckMark]

Welcome to the sickness...er...hobby. Good guys here without a doubt - they've helped me a lot getting pointed in the right direction.

I am running passenger as well, these are my experiences with this. I just built my layout with that in mind. If you plan on running full size coaches (I run Athearn 72 foot streamliners) unfortunately you'll want to run at least 26" radius. They will run on 24" or so, but hang out quite a bit (looking kinda odd) and usually derail in reverse. Truck mounted couplers will help somewhat on smaller radius turns, but body mounted ones look better and seem to run better when reversing.

As for layout design I used XtrkCAD, a free design program. It is a bit tricky to use at first but don't give up - do tutorials, whatever you can to understand it as it was a HUGE help for me in getting the design just right before cutting a single board. Plus you can print the track out in 1:1 (life size), then lay it out on the board. It's uber cool!

Mark

 

[UP2CSX]

Welcome aboard!

18" radius curves really limit you to about 60' cars. 22" radius curves will take 80' cars if the the track is perfect and the cars are perfect in terms of the being properly weighted and the wheels being in gauge. 24" curves are much moe tolerant of small faults and 26" curves are evn better. Once you get your layout books, check out some aroound the wall plans. You can get much wider radius curves in the same space and a 5x10 table can be a real pain to work with.

DCC systems can be somewhat of a religious battle among model railroaders. You can get everything from an NCE starter set at about $200 all the way into thousands. NCE, MRC, Soundtraxx, and Lenz are some well known names of companies that produce DCC sets is a variety of price ranges and with different sets of options. If I may suggest, first decide on your track plan and how many locomotives you will want to run at once. More locomotives = more $ for DCC so there's no sense in either overpaying for capacity you won't use or getting a DCC system without enough power to run all the engines you want.

 

[jbaakko]

Hey there... Welcome to the forum!

Personally I'd avoid 18" no matter what, it might be fine now, but eventually you'll get mad at it (I did long long ago).

 

[OldGettysk]

Welcome to the forum !!!

 

[jetdriver]

Hey thanks a bunch guys! So 18 and 22"er's are out and 24" or better are in for my passenger setup. I'll check out that XtrkCAD program too. It sounds like a great resource (tks mark). Paul, Josh, Jim, and Mark thanks again. I'll be in touch with 4,783 more questions!
-take care