Hi everyone. I am new to this forum and building layouts in this scale. It's been 35 years since my last 4x8 HO layout!, and other than a stab at G-Scale in the garden I've been an armchair RR'r looking for a scale I feel comfortable with. I am afraid the smaller scales don't agree with my 60+ year old eyes and G-Scale is such a hassle outdoors. So I've sold off all my G-Scale and am reinvesting in 3-Rail O Scale. My brother in Washington is into O 2-rail and On3 so he was a bit of an inspiration. My wife was gracious enough to give me the right-of-way of half our two car garage, so I have the challenge of building a interesting layout in a somewhat small space. Although I have tinkered with tinplate, my interest is in realistic scale/semi scale operations. At some point I wish to run a UP Challenger passenger train so the challenge was fitting 072/081 curves in an 8' x 18' area and still leave room for a decent size passenger yard and freight yard. I think I've come up with a decent plan using those curves and Atlas #5 switches. I used SCARM to design it and have included the file. I have a few "honey-dos" to take care of before I get started but hope to have trains running by Christmas. Will keep this thread posted with updates.
Thanks.
