I rushed into this hobby, I'll admit that. I nailed some track to a piece of plywood and used some e-bay junk lot santa fe engines to pull some junk rolling stock. It didn't work very well. But I had to see a train go in a circle, isn't that always the first goal? I bought some split cork for roadbed, improved my benchwork, invested in some better rolling stock and some knuckle couplers and it worked a lot better. Except those junky locomotives kept derailing. FINALLY bought a nice Bachmann GP-40 in Conrail paint from the local hobby shop, which was actually the CHEAPEST locomotive they had there at about 40 bucks, and I couldn't believe the difference. It didn't derail randomly, didn't decouple for no apparant reason, actually MOVED at slow speeds instead of an almost on/off sort of a deal. I really wanted to repaint those old junk locomotives and use them but I think I'll be discarding them. You really do get what you pay for, don't you? I can see why some people might get discouraged early and just say "SCREW THIS!", but I put a little time and money into it and I'm just thrilled with the results.
So I guess my point is, it it NORMAL for this to be so addictive?
So I guess my point is, it it NORMAL for this to be so addictive?