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    Grade and distributed power

    I'm working my new layout and it's going to require a pretty steep grade (4%) up and then back down in order to get over the doorway and not be in the way. Also (and maybe this is a bad habit I'll have to change) I run actual loads, not the plastic lids you can put on hoppers, but charcoal...
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    Switches

    Is it considered OK to wire one side of the track direct and have a switch for the other? Seems to me it would work, but I'm worried there might be some reason not to do that.
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    Too soon?

    Anybody else have their kids into model railroading, or plan to? Little Abigail doesn't really know what to do with that thing at 4 months of course, but soon enough she will. Oh and anybody who says this stuff is just for boys, maybe it once was. I think my daughter is going to just love to...
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    First attempt here

    My attic is roughly 15' x 30' and and the agreement with the misses is that as long as I keep all my crap up there, I can have it all :D So my plan is to run 4x4 plywood all around the walls (can't get 4x8 up the steps, let alone in my car), with some sort of a bridge over the stairwell. I...
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    First attempt here

    Yeah, I guess I should have scaled those down a bit. But the camera I'm using today is on loan from work. It's also TERRIBLE if you don't get it exactly squared away and free of vibration. I'm just so proud of my two locomotives especially, and my MRY caboose that I never thought I'd find...
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    First attempt here

    Ok I'm ripping my entire layout apart for a THIRD time (that's the charm, right?) to go with flex track with a 40 inch radius, figured I'd snap a few pics of my rolling stock so far before I did so. These are my first ever photos of my railroad, but please DON'T be kind. I can take criticism...
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    Nope, still not giving up.

    It was just a foreign concept to me that the difference between old junk and quality stuff is SO major. I went to far as to get a small level, file the ends of some pieces of track down so that they were absolutely flush, everything I could do and the old locomotives still derailed and were...
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    Nope, still not giving up.

    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...
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    Powerlines

    Well I'd like to have functioning power lines, that's my idea, but maybe it's not the most reasonable way to go. I'm definately not leaving any power to anything when I'm not there, and when I am there, well I do have a couple heavy industrial fire extinguishers in the house, though I'd rather...
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    Powerlines

    well my layout is HO scale, and I was hoping to use actual wire to conduct electricity, though thread doesn't sound like a terrible alternative. I can always run the wire underground. I want to keep to scale as much as possible, but I don't want to burn my house down from overheating wires or...
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    Powerlines

    I want to run powerlines to get power to various points in my railroad. Is there any special gauge of wire required for this? One thing I have an abundance of is category 5 ethernet cable. It's pretty thin, I don't know what gauge this amounts to, but will this be good enough to use if i...
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    Question about Repainting from scratch

    I just decided as a test to take one of the ol' santa fe locomotives and just paint right over it with acrylic black paint (kinda older loco and paint scheme than I plan to model, but just to see) and it actually worked pretty good. Even without stripping the old paint off or taking any...
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    Question about Repainting from scratch

    I'm new to this, and I'm not sure if what I'm going after here is workable, thought maybe somebody could give me some input. Is it at all possible to repaint existing locomotives and rolling stock (mainly run of the mill santa fe stuff) to your own or does this generally end badly? Here's a...
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    I wanted to introduce myself and say hello.

    Well those would be the lines to the north of the bridge. The PRR line went across the bridge in Brownsville and off into Uniontown. That line is now abandoned east of the bridge. South of the bridge was the Monongahela Railway. I'm not even that old and I still remember seeing the MRY...
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    I wanted to introduce myself and say hello.

    Maybe this will help with the scale. I sort of figured I'd have to come up with a unique plan loosely based on the line because to model the entire thing to scale would take up WAY more space than my 20x26 foot attic could accomodate. As far as the wiring goes I'm pretty handy with electronics...
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    I wanted to introduce myself and say hello.

    I definately figure track layout is the place to start planning. I really wanted to do the whole line full-scale but that would take an enormous amount of space that I don't have, so I cut the less interesting parts short and came up with this: A line on each side of the `river' (which I...
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    I wanted to introduce myself and say hello.

    Oh I'm not discouraged at all, at least not yet ;). I bought a few $20 lots on e-bay, and I'm a firm believer in the fact that you get what you pay for! But I wanted some mixed junk to start out with, and I have got that now. I hope to get some quality NS/CSX/CONRAIL locomotives soon and go...
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    I wanted to introduce myself and say hello.

    I'm glad to see that there are some friendly people here! Thanks for the warm welcome, all! I'll be sure to get some pictures and/or video when I get something substantial, but as it stands now my project consists of a bunch of wacky track and a single Santa Fe engine that I think must have...
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    I wanted to introduce myself and say hello.

    Hey there. My name's Luke. I'm 26 and just moved into a house with an attic big enough to get into (read that as: the wife will allow me to) model railroading. I had a few sets as a kid but never had the space until now, though I've been a fan of the railroads pretty much all of my life...
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