Hello from Virginia

[jkyu55]

December 23, 1988 my brother and me went to a hobby store. We were going to hang out all weekend so we wanted some things to do. He bought a model car and I found a Southern Pacific engine and bought 5 cars and enough track for a figure 8. I watched it go round and round for 12 hours.. Now I'm a Locomotive engineer and have a 9 year old son who adores trains as much as he does me. I'm building him a layout in the basement, it will be our second effort ( http://youtu.be/tq90bKTqYiM ). He built his little city called Gabrielsville, and put on a little car show behind the movie theater. It has 4 customers to service, or should I say it DID have 4 customers. Last years earthquake came by and pretty much wiped it out and broke his heart. Now I have a really large basement and want to run it along the walls.. we're looking for it to have a nice little yard, to hold about 50 cars and some engines. It'll have a a nice downtown with maybe a short piece of street running and some customers to service as well as along the right away.! Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[Burlington Bob]

Welcome to the forums! This is the best site on the Internet to get info on model railroading so don't be shy about asking questions. You won't get slammed for anything here, this is a very friendly place to hang out.

You might want to get a copy of John Armstrong's Track Planning for Realistic Operation. It has a wealth of info and ideas for designing your own layout and there are plenty of books and Internet sites with designs you can copy or alter if you wish.

Ask questions and do research (in other words, learn from others mistakes) and you will have a great time in the hobby. What scale, railroad and era are you planning to model? I'm going to do the CB&Q in N scale in central Illinois from about 1957 to 1967 starting this fall.