Model Railroading – and so it begins

I don’t remember what exactly it was that made me decide to start model railroading, but one day early February 2013 my wife, our 9 month old baby and I went to the local model train store and ended up getting a locomotive, a 3-bay hopper and a loop of Kato Unitrack (with power pack!). I had no idea what I needed, just that right then and there I wanted something that would be easy to set up and work immediately. I didn’t really have any plans on a layout or even size. My impulsive tendencies took over, and I wanted something before I left the store! I chose HO scale since I felt it was a good size – N scale looked cool but it just seemed a little too small for me.

Once home, I set up a portion of the track on the dining room table and found out the track was too big – the loop required a surface area that was 5 feet by 8 feet. I already knew I was going to need to build a train table, but I was expecting to make one that was 4×8. So while I looked up plans and ideas on the internet, I played with the new train on the half dozen pieces of track going back and forth for a couple of weeks.