Help from Woodstock Ga

[pepi]

Greetings,
I am pepi and have been modeling N for 20 years. I like N because you can pull long trains, 30 car and to me pound for pound the engines are powerful compared to HO and the detail is great.

Much can be done in this scale, rolling stock is primary Kadee, with some other mixes of cars that were not produced by Kadee. I know they are Micro trains today, but mine were bought as Kadee and so shall remain.

My layout is 16 X 20 with 3 mainlines, just some quick facts about me and my RR the G&J. I'll be talking to ya, and will happily share what I have learned over the years.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Photogdad]

Hello and welcome to the board. No I've seen some rather long 60+ car trains pulled by HO scale locomotives. Lots of knowledge here and plenty of N scalers too. However I model in the HO side of the hobby. Have a good'n

 

[pepi]

Thanks, looks like I fat fingered the Hello and it came out help... oh brother, HO is good and 60 car pulls I bet are double headed. I like any scale as long as it looks realistic. For me N gives one the advantage of having a larger RR in a smaller room, with a good scenery to track ratio. If I were king I'd have O but then your buildings get massive also, and that needs a 50 ft room.

 

[Photogdad]

Nope, no double headers. A buddy of mine back in Virginia models coal trains, double stacks and auto racks. His 4-8-4 can haul the 60+ coal cars and he has a SD40-2 that he uses to show that one locomotive can haul his string of auto racks and double stacks. His layout is 30x60, 2 levels with a helix. Again its HO. For me I have always found HO to be just the right size, the detail on rolling stock and locomotives is great on most, I guess thats why a lot of resort to super detailing. Plus with a slight loss of vision, HO is the smallest I can go....lol. Anywho, I'd like to have a grand gardern railroad, but one can dream.

 

[TrinityJayOne]

I'm into N for similar reasons, Pepi. I don't have a massive area to work with and while I could do HO, it would be a tight loop at best or a switching layout. I can get 4x as much train in working with N.

 

[Burlington Bob]

Back in the early eighties I ventured into HO because I was tired of the lack of quality in N. That only lasted a short time because the larger size required shorter trains (and runs) and the quality just didn't seem to be that much better. Like you, I like long trains and I don't want to look at a cobweb of track. I want some open spaces even if it is just an expanse of the Plywood Pacific.

Then I got away from the modeling aspect for a little over 20 years and came back a little over a year ago. I couldn't believe the improvements! I've started over with new locos and DCC but still have my old rolling stock and I've been adding to that.

I was counting on getting a whole room for my trains this past fall but that didn't work out, however I'm still hoping for next fall or early winter. Waiting on a MAJOR remodeling project to make it right. I'm not going to start a layout in a room that's not completely ready. That never works out well in the end.