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Cannonball: I've posted this before. Don't know if they are still available but the price is in your range. Cut and Assemble A Western Town. A book of cutout buildings. Author---Edmund V. Gillon Jr. Unfortunately they are HO scale. They could be reduced on a computer. Look Up Dover Publications...

Some really good suggestions from various folks. I'll go along with not adopting any standards,unless you plan to make them interoperable with another layout or group. Weight and size are probably your two primary concerns. If you are in a hurry to remove them from your basement, you also...

Hi Matt: By "city", do you mean downtown or suburban area,or some of each? Street level rails are common in downtown areas. Yards and sidings can even be slightly below street level since the railroad facilities usually predated city planning. Many industrial sidings sag and twist...

Welcome to The Gauge. Reference your comment about a coal to oil changeover, there wasn't a definite period such as that. Some railroads stayed with coal right up to the end of steam operations. Some had both right up to the end. The NP used both oil and coal fired locomotives in different...

I started with a Marx set but for some reason I couldn't ignore the fact that very few real trains had only four wheels on each car. My used Lionel set was a step up but the proportion of the car body to the size of the trucks just didn't do it. And then somewhere I came across a MR magazine...

Yep, you can't beat old tech for some jobs. No batteries, No loud noises and they do the job. I have what is called a fret saw in addition to a jewelers saw. Looks like a jewelers saw but with a elongated frame. I believe it was designed for cutting holes in musical instruments like violins etc.

Mountain Man: I think my answer to your question (not the only or best answer,maybe) is population density, infrastructure in place for many years, the fact that european countries and Japan are much smaller in area than the US and for years, roads were not adequate for long distance travel...

That should make for some interesting pictures. I'll see if I have better luck with this thread than I did with my last attempt .

A hearty welcome from the state of Montana, USA. Yes, we hear from Madhatter occasionally.

Thanks for the photo's. Good shots of some interesting equipment.

Routing, as noted, is one of the big problems. Especially to smaller communities. The other is that freight railroads don't want to deal with passenger trains. Witness the fact that Amtrak trains are not the first priority on transcontinental routes. They are only there because the...

Western Oregon had a rash of thefts of bronze statues recently. How could any scrap yard not be suspicious of arms, legs and heads of local hero's and historical figures showing up?

I'll second Russ' comment about not having both wrists done at the same time. I had a friend who went that route and he mentioned some of the basic problems. Need I say more?

Les: and don't forget that the house was probabably 1250 to 1500 square feet, not 3000 plus with 3 to 4 bathrooms.

Kevin: About that Walthers bridge track, be happy that they had it. I waited for about a year for it to get back into stock. In the meantime I used regular flex track. Flex track works just fine but doesnt have the tie spacing and guard rails to make it look prototypical. Fortunately, our...

Try checking the NMRA website. I don't think there have been any sustantial changes. Just type in NMRA and you'll get the official website. You can compare dimensions.

Yep, I've seen your posts and some of the discussion.

Probably a visit to the museum layout to check on train operation. Higher temps are playing havoc with the track alignment and then there is the track cleaning and ongoing scenery work.

Dull, safe and routine doesn't sell. Nobody ever asks me about all of the safe avaition that I've dealt with, just " why do so many planes crash? Answer-- Because there are not that many crashes.

Xiong: I can second the cost factor of aluminum honeycomb panels. My career field was in the aerospace industry. Honeycomb panels by definition are hollow and are not meant to have holes drilled or punched in them unless there is some engineering involved to strengthen the area around the...