Hello Everyone,

I'll be the first new member to post to the new thread. I live in Dutchess County New York, in a small town about 80 miles North of NYC.

I'm getting back into model railroading after a long time. I've had a 3x6, n-scale layout that I build 30+ years ago. From those humble beginnings I intend to start fresh and build a bigger system. I am modelling locations of interest from my life, instead of a particular system.

I intend to build multiple levels on a couple long walls I have in my finished basement. I'm hoping to build it in a way that I can take it apart and reassemble it somewhere else. Currently I'm looking at three different layers. Lowest will be a train yard; above that will be a section of a City arround the train station. Above that will be a landscape with farms and bridges.

My train yard will be modeled after the yard at Elkhart Indiana. The jobs there were what brought one side of my family to the United States. Its a large and complex yard that I am scaling down to a managable number of tracks and switches. It contains an engine maintenance and fueling station, a turn around loop and a freight car maintenance area as well as a plethera of parallel tracks for sorting and switching.

I'm choosing Poughkeepsie as my city train station, I'm familiar with it and can get the pictures and details I need easily. It is also somewhat sunken, in that the buildings have grown up around the track leaving it with the need to look down into the platforms with parking garages and overpasses crowding the old time station.

The landscape will include a version of my grandfathers farm as well as camping and canoeing trips and the tressle bridge I used to cross as a teen. I'm planning on connecting all three levels (probably with helix) so that trains can move between the layouts.

I have DC controllers now and am considering putting in DCC. Though my final choice may actually be a computer controlled layout. I enjoy the challenge of building the layout and transferring what is in my mind to reality. I don't enjoy engines that don't want to run or are not reliable. I will be looking for help here to learn about cleaning and maintaining them.

Thanks for having me,

David

David, welcome to the forums and thanks for telling us a little about yourself and your layout plans.

Sounds like a very interesting layout and I hope we get to see pictures of your progress.

Hello David. Welcome to the Forum, and looking forward to your contributions.

Hi David, glad to see you found how to join and find your way around. Got your email and I'll drop you a line soon. Pat

Hi, My name is Marcus, and I've been using model trains since I was about 4....

... oh, wait, this isn't the 12-step program!

But I have been a train nut my whole life. My first exposure to model trains came with a clockwork Tri-ang set when I was 4. I graduated to electric Tri-ang when I was 6, and it's only gotten worse since then. I've built the standard HO 4x8 layouts in high school, done some around-the-walls with handlaid track (both HO and N), but have been mostly modeling vicariously through friends and the internet. I also work at a friends' hobby shop doing repairs and DCC decoder installations, sound and otherwise.

My modeling interests have sharpened down to a few areas... mostly the Finger-Lakes area of New York State, where the Pennsy and NYC ran joint coal trains up out of Pennsylvania to Sodus Point NY. I'm fascinated by the operations in this area in the mid-1950s, since there's a cool mix of steam and 1st generation diesels, and the traffic is a neat mix of merchandise, perishables and coal. The scenery's pretty nice too. But that's going to have to wait until I get a real basement (or at least one I can stand up in).

I've been bemused by Bachmann's On30 offerings ever since they first came out, and have been acquiring a small collection of bits... and having followed Troels Kirk's Coast Line progress, I'm quite inspired to dig that stuff out of its boxes and build, if not a large layout, at least a small shelf railroad to scratch my building itch.

My favourite parts of the hobby are building and running... I love scratchbuilding and handlaying track, and I love operations, anything from simply shuffling cars to a full timetable/switchlist/car-forwarding scheme. I really enjoy model photography too, and how digital cameras have made good model photography so much easier than the old days of tungsten lamps and slide film.

There's not much I don't like about the hobby... but having refined my interests over such a long time, I'd say there are things I find less interesting than others. I'm a bit of a scale snob, in that I prefer modelling that approaches realism versus Lionel toy-train like appearances.

I've warmly embraced DCC... but being a child of the digital era, (ie _my_ VCR never flashed 12:00... 12:00... 12:00) I don't find it as daunting as some people do. Having maintained a large club layout wired by an East-German engineer with a floating common system (don't ask, it's too painful to recall!) I appreciate the simplicity of DCC wiring, and the fact that a good decoder with BEMF will make even the oldest dog of a loco run better. I really enjoy the challenge of getting the best sound possible out of models, being a DIY audiophile, I'm looking forward to having the time to experiment with enclosure volumes and shapes to better shape the sound coming out of our trains.

I live in Southern Ontario, Canada, I'm 45, and just defended my PhD this past summer. I'm also into RC model planes, camping, and canoeing with my 16' canvas and cedar canoe.

I'm looking forward to joining the community here, it seems you've got a good thing going.

Cheers,

Marc

Welcome aboard, Dave and Marc. Thanks for taking the time to introduce yourselves.

George

Welcome aboard Dave and Marc and thanks for such interesting introductions. It sounds like you both come to the forum with lot's to offer.

Oh, by the way Marc, looking at our 'handles', I feel like we're related!

new here seems like good forum thank you for accepting i model rock island in ho and wildhorse and caddo creek rxr in on30

Glad to see you’re able to log on, Gary. Welcome aboard.

George

Hi:

I live in the foothills west of Denver--yes just a few miles from the CO RR Museum. I've been in the model RR hobby as an adult for a bit over 20 years. I'm especially interested in structure modeling. Related to that topic I am trying to find as much info as possible on the former Colorado Central roundhouse located in Golden, CO in the 1890s until ????. I've seen the photos of the front with dual gauge track and engines and photos taken from above and the rear of the structure, but I do not have any dimensions, interior shots, or frankly much detail at all about the structure. I've searched the NGSLG index, the Denver library photo website, searched Mainline Modeler index, gone and inquired at the CO RR Museum, but I do not have any details other than the gross outside dimensions from a CO RR Museum valuation survey (from 1917?) that I am not even sure is the same structure that was there in the mid 1890s. Any other info would be very welcome.

Marc, Gary and William, welcome to the forums.

Hi Everyone,

I live in southern West Virginia right near the Virginia border yes coal country.I've been building models for over 45 years starting with model airplanes at age eight then progressing to model cars by twelve.I was also model railroading then but they were the type of layouts that I built in my grandmothers living room for the weekend then have to tear down until the next weekend the do it all over again.As I got older I started getting into the model car scene more seriously and was building for shows and competing but I never got rid of my trains.I kept them in my closet for the next 30 years.I liked building dioramas but in 1/25 scale they were just to big to keep so one day I broke out an old train building and started building it.At 1/87 scale the dioramas were alot more manageable but soon I ran out of space.Then Ebay came along and I had an outlet to continue my hobby.I like the building and scenery part of the hobby the best so kitbashes and dioramas are what I mainly do. I model mainly HO scale but do some N scale.I model almost exclusively in plastic.The last couple of years I have been building for a guy in Michigan that is modeling 40's - 60's New York City and the harbor area.He needs alot of large buildings not only in height but also in length so it gives me the opportunity to kitbash some very unusual structures.Since New York is influenced with alot of European architecture I get to use alot of kits out of Germany that most would never use on their layout.You can see alot of them on my Fotki picture site.Looking forward to all the forums and learning some new tips and would love to hear from some of the plastic kit builders also.

John, welcome to the RR-Line forums.

Thanks for telling us a little about yourself and your modeling interests.

I took a brief look through your fotki site.

You certainly have modeled some very large and impressive structures.

I look forward to your continued participation on the forums and seeing more of your work.

I might have missed them, but do you have any pictures of this layout that is being built?

Hello to all the RRL Forum Gang.

I live in Southeastern NC, in the small Town of Rose Hill. Been involved with trains for most of my life, starting with watching, then running my late grandfather's O-27 trains he had set up on a ping-pong table in his basement.

I started and have continued in HO scale when I was 11 or 12, buying my equipment with my paper route money. I have dabbled a bit in N scale and every now and again I contemplate O scale. Now being in my mid 50's, I consider myself a so-so modelrer, but I do have fun and trains keep me out of trouble.

I am not a protorype modeler, but more a mix between free-lance/short line, based on BN and it's predecessor roads. The era is sorta "wide-open", as I have F-units, NW/SW switchers, with my most modern locos being MP-15DC's and GP-38's. Most of my freight fleet consists of 40' or shorter cars, but I have added quite a few 3, 4 and 6-bay covered hoppers and an assortment of 50' boxcars.

My layout is approximately 11'6" wide at it's widest and about 16' long at it's longest point. It was built in semi-modular sections and has yet to be re-assembled, due to a move, about 1 yr ago. It's in a 12x20 storage building that I still need to insulate and finsih on the inside, but the house/yard have come 1st. I can run the "main" section of the layout, as it's based on Atlas' Morgan Valley RR.

My favorite part of the hobby is operations. I really enjoy doing the switching of spurs/sidings as part of way freight operations. My least favorite part is weathering and scenery, which is why my layout looks like the "World", before Columbus "discovered" it...... FLAT!!!

I converted to DCC about 5 or 6 years ago, but can still run DC should the need arise.

Other than not having a "Lick of sense", there isn't much else to tell about me, other than I've been and still am in Law Enforcement for over 34 years, which is probably why, I don't have a lick of sense!! I'd post a pic, if I could find one right quick, but I'm afraid I might scare any "little children" that might be lurking about.

Certainly looking forward to being actively involved here.

Mike