What's This All About?

A few years ago I dug my N scale trains out of the closet after having been in storage for, oh, about 20 years. My skills haven't improved much at all and that box full of stuff hasn't improved much either. Thankfully the quality and quantity of N scale things has improved greatly in that time.

Right away I joined a bunch of message boards and forums and made alot of friends(and a couple enemies I'm sure). It was great for a while but a guy can only read so many forum posts on which coupler mounting is correct, which brand of track is correct, how terrible some new product is, and how this diagram showing a maze of track is sure to operate "prototypically" because it includes a Timesaver that is going to be all kinds of fun. It all runs together after a while and every couple months it repeats like a broken record with all the usual suspects injecting all the usual comments.

To get me going a big box of track was donated by my uncle. A lot of really old Atlas track, some old Atlas switches, some really really old Lima and Model Power flex. He's an HO'er and didn't really have any use for this stuff. It supplemented my own collection of really old Bachmann track well. I cut it all up, tried a hundred different arrangements on all kinds of different benchwork types and took a lot of (bad) advice from other people. In the end I trashed it all, spent a bunch of money on Atlas code 55 track and threw together a switching shelf based on Bryon Henderson's San Jose Switching Layout. I investigated body mounted couplers, scale profile metal wheels, and fiddly etched detail parts. I would surely be able to wow everyone with my intricate switching maneuvers and super detailed trackwork. Heck, I was nearly convinced to rip up the Atlas track and start hand laying, joint bars and all!

I dreamed up a really sweet waybill operating scheme where I roll a dice, draw waybills from a deck, assemble the train, and head out for some serious switching operation. Oh what fun. Don't get me wrong, it's a cool plan. It operates well, and some day it will look real good. Trouble is it's not at all what I want. It deviates from my original goal to run trains. I'm a roundy rounder at heart and this thing just doesn't do that. I do want to finish it some day, or plug it in to a larger system (something that goes around and around), but for now it's been put on hold as I get back to basics and build what I want.