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Plus, you "economy of scale;" basically the more of them out there the cheaper it is to produce, less N scale purchasers, less N scale engines sold, higher cost to produce less engines; more HO purchasers, more HO engines sold, the less the cost.

Well, I have one more idea but I'm going to check it out with some one tonight before I again suffer from premature verbalization. IF you don't hear from me on this thread, you'll know it was another bad idea.... lol!

Val, my bad; for some reason I thought you were in N scale. In N scale what I am proposing is very doable; its doable in HO scale but the "blob" from the helix would eat a lot of room and look ugly. Why is it doable in N, because with 17 inch radius, your peninsual needs to be about 38 inches...

Hi Spitfire, long time no talk. Looking at your layout, if you wanted to increase its size to empire you could use the peninsula as a Nolix area, look at John Armstrong's plan for the Athabasca railroad, back in MR some time ago, can't remember. A peninsula was used to raise the trains but it...

A trick, if you can build your track work on thicker foam on the layout, is to have one track going up, while the other one goes down (hence the reason the build the track on foam so you can get the down grade) thus reducing the grade of the train going up. I wouldn't worry about creating a 4...

PWR is a company with a "history." The history was somewhat negative for quite some time for reasons I won't go into as I am a local here in Greater Vancouver and do talk to some of the guys in the company. The company has qualitatively changed course in the last couple of years so that now I...

To come back to dmcgeoch's question, I always cheer for N scale if a guy has limited space, almost too restrictive in HO, and wants to run modern equipment. I went through the same dilemma using my study; I don't know how many track and bench plans I drew up in HO before accepting I wasn't...

What kind of space are you going to put the 4 by 8? A 4 by 8 takes up almost an entire room when you include the walk around area. In N, for example, you could have a better layout that is water wings in shape and roughly 3 by 9 or 3 by 10, a very nice size for an N layout and laying against...

Here is a kit from Woodland Scenics that is a powerful motivator (lousy track plan) for a 4 by 8 but you can use it on anything smaller. It has everything you need to build the layout scenically including a mountain, grass, trees, road, etc. Even glue, a great instruction booklet that is many...

There is some crazy notion floating out there that N scale isn't suited to operations. One of the best N scale layouts that features operations is here in Vancouver - owned by Brian Morgan, the one and same man who has had many articles run in the N scale mags. People fly in from all over...

In tight spaces, you will find more opinions, not less, with a smaller layout - I presume HO. Why? Well in a large layout you can pretty much do what you want, in a small layout there are going to be compromises. So I always answer your type of question with what would give me a great deal of...

Triplex, most folks don't run "scale" trains that I have seen here in Vancouver and I've been to around 50 layouts on tours and visits. I would say the average HO train length I've seen here is around 10 to 12 feet long. Of the basement N scale layouts I've seen, they've run substantially...

The reason I say N scale is suited better for the modern era is partially self evident and partially not. Much more is available in N for the modern era; yes steam has progressed in N but it hasn't even come close, not even a little bit, to what is available to HO modellers in steam. Try and...

You don't mention what your interests are in the hobby, by that I mean what era do you want to model. I love the modern era which N scale is best suited for, you can have a realistic 8 foot long train in N with a double lash up of SD90's; try that in HO and it will be a joke. HO is the better...

Even DC layouts go down because of problems When I read of problems such as you have encountered, many issues are raise. For example, have proper "procedures" been used when installing the DCC? What system are they using? Did they consider power districts so that when one section went down...

"The turnout would have decoder and turnout as one. This should not add much to the price since the decoder has one function, to throw the rails. A seperate controller for turnout specific. It could be something that can be palce on a controll panel, wireless or tethered." This is a...

Relationships with and between men, fathers and sons can be and often are more difficult when it comes to communications, the same with my father, and millions and zillions of fathers and sons out there. I don't know how we got into that predicament, but we did. My own father acknowledged the...

Not their best issue, not their worst issue. Consider it your reading material over the holidays when your sitting around bored.

As some of you old timers here know, I hang out with a group of HO'rs on Friday nights and help work on John Green's layout in Vancouver, BC. Vancouver's local community newspaper just recently did a fairly decent article on John's layout. Unfortunately to make it "net" friendly, many of the...

Well its that time of year for my posting of this again, but every year I learn how to do it lazier and lazier - see age does has its privileges...lol! I'm hoping this link works. The schedule will be at the bottom of the page for both countries. And Vancouver - as the best place to live...