Episode 1. Starting your model railway journey.

Creating a model railway is an exciting long-term project that takes planning, patience and creativity.

This can be broken into 5 categories.

1. Planning and research.

2. Design and baseboards 

3. Constructing and track laying.

4. Electrics and control.

5. Scenery and detailing.

Within this structure their are three main factors to consider first.

BUDGET, SPACE, ABILITY.

What is your budget and Indeed what are the costs?

Where to build, do you have a Room, shed, loft or will you need a 'man shed!

Power, you'll need to power your Layout. Are you DC or DCC? (I'll explain difference).

Trains, wagons, coaches. How many will you need?

Realty is, it depends on what you want your Layout to look like, Scotsman pulling 8 coaches will cost a lot more than a Pannier tank and 3 coal wagons.

6 Baseboards will cost more than 1 micro layout.

Ability comes into this as well, out of the box tunnel mouths will be more expensive than scratch building your own.

Best advice, think about how much you want to spend, remembering this is a long term hobby, you don't need 10 engines on day one.

 

Next time, Ability and Space.

 

 

 

Episode 2. Space and Ability.

So, where do you build this model railway?

This is where you take a walk around your house, the obvious places are bedrooms, lofts, garages, sheds, out buildings but what if you don't have any of those?

Don't dispare because where there's a will there's a way, how about a micro layout that may fit in a small space?

But what factors do you need to consider? Well budget will come into it, it's no good having a spare bedroom if your budget is limited, bigger the space the more it will cost.

A loft for instance sounds great but does it have propoer steps, electrics etc? If not, that will cost.

Garages, sheds and outbuilding will all need electrics, heating and security, which again can get costly. You may even build a "Man shed" but again ££££.

Myself I commondered the box room (8x10) and although its big enough for Horby Junction I would love a bigger space.

In the end, as with ability, all these things will affect the type of layout you can build.

 

So Ability, do you have the ability to build this model world? Indeed does that matter?

Reality, the fact you're readings this blog means you've probably got the basic woodworking and electrical skills required, as for the rest you can learn as you go, blogs, YouTube videos are excellent ways to learn how to do a particular job. 

This is all part of the planning, before you build anything, read up on it, apparently you're never to old to learn!

 

Next time, once we have our space identified, what are you going to do with it?