First Steps

Have you decided that you'd like to start model railroading? Excellent! You will need a few things to begin:

• A dry, clean area where you can setup your layout. Dust, cat hair (and cats) will not only ruin the illusion you're trying to create, but also cripple the trains themselves. The engines have tiny little electric motors that rely upon clean, uninterrupted contact with the metal rails for their power. Hair and dust cuts this contact, causing stalls.

• Some sort of large surface to permanently mount the track to. There are many options on how to build one, which I will discuss later, or you can look online for other ideas! You will want to permanently mount the tracks, so that they don't move, you can ballast them, and then wire them for running trains. Plus, permanently mounted tracks increase reliability - tracks that are frequently setup and torn-down become worn-out and electrical reliability can be severely compromised over time. You can do so to start, trying different configurations until you find one your really like, but try to keep it to a minimum!

• A Power-Pack. MRC makes great starter packs that are better than what you'd find in a train-set.

• An Engine. This is the actual locomotive that powers the train. A train is not just the engine, but the whole line of cars behind and including the engine.

• Rolling-stock. This is what modelers call boxcars, flatcars, passenger cars, etc. They "roll" but aren't powered themselves, they're pulled by the train.

• Wires, to connect the power pack to the tracks.

• An electrical outlet.

That's pretty much the basics to start. Once you have the track connected to the power-pack, the trains on the tracks, and the power plugged in and turned off, you can run trains on the tracks. Most of the above can be found in a standard "train-set", but beware: typical sets that include "everything" from engine, rolling stock, track, and power supply, tend to be Christmas toy items meant for small children, and are of lower quality than what you'd find shopping for the items individually. However, it's a good cheap start, and you can replace things as you go along.

Things that you may wish to consider as you become more serious about the hobby:

• A subscription to Model Railroader magazine, and a few Kalmbach books for beginners.
  

• A back-drop. Doesn't have to be fancy, but something blue and white behind the layout to denote a horizon and sky can greatly improve the illusion that you're not just running trains in the basement, but a railroad through the wilderness (or city). If you can afford it, there are companies that sell backdrops of varying price (with varying quality), such as Backdrop Warehouse.
  

• Electrical blocks. You may wish to set these up before permanently mounting your tracks. Basically, you can only run one train at a time unless you setup "blocks" of tracks that are electrically isolated from other blocks, using toggle switches to turn the blocks on and off. Conversely, you can use digital command control (DCC) to control more than one locomotive at a time, using just one throttle and one electrical block. More about this in another post! For now, here's a good external website you can use.
  

• Scenery. What do you want your layout to look like when it's done? You may not want a flat tabletop layout - you may want to cut out sections of it so that you can model areas below the track level, such as rivers under bridges and trestles. Do you want to model a city, the country, or a combination of both?
  

• Better equipment. You'll find that better quality, more expensive equipment does indeed run as well as look better.

• Upgrading couplers. Beginner-level rolling stock in HO has "horn-hook", N-Scale has "rapido". Neither look realistic, or work very well, but they're not patented, so Atlas doesn't have to pay a company that makes couplers (like Kadee) to use theirs. You can however switch them yourself. Micro-Trains already has the "good" N Scale couplers on their cars, because they make them!