I recently got "Back Into" model railroading. While it was something I did quite a bit as a child (ages 5-18), it's only recently that I've got suitably aged kids and a big enough house to return to an old hobby. 
In the past year, I've effectively started from scratch. These are my impressions of how things have changed.
1. Track. Fastrack. Enh. I needed track (I didn't have any) so sat down and figured out what to use. Surprisingly, it was a complicated decision. I eventually settled on "FasTrack" mostly due to brand recognition and too many choices. It's a bit maddening how expensive it is, but the quality seems decent. I've been buying it used, especially as parts of used sets, so things have worked out.
2. Switches. I have bad memories of constantly having to repair the old Lionel switches, so I ruled those out. I ended up with 30ish brand new FastTrack Command/Control switches. My biggest knock is that the quality seems quite poor (I have brand new Legacy Engines that derail continually). On a semi-regular basis they don't switch, and I have to manually tweak something at which point they work fine for a while. Bulb's burn out more often that I would have thought, and the **** caps continually fall off. Coupled with the lack of updating of the LCS system when they auto-switch, and I would grade the Lionel Fastrack switches an "F" in all respects. Given their cost, this is shocking.
3. Wiring. Coming from the old-school world, I *love* the way I wire things up now. I have *zero* wires going to switches, and only 4 power points on each level. This is beautiful. This is the biggest change over what I remember, and I love it. Wiring is done in in minutes, rather than weeks. This cannot be overstated.
4. LCS/Legacy Control + WiFi. I started fresh, and went with Lionel over MTH mostly due to brand recognition. I'm not sure I made the right decision, but I'm mostly happy with how things are. The only really poor experience is the iPad application which I find very frustrating. If anyone has any good alternatives, please let me know. I am planning to integrate the "Update LCS when a switch switches" at some point, which will help a bit.
5. Lion Chief. My kids (4yrs old twin boys) love their Lion Chief trains. I find the cost is good, the features are decent, and the simplicity is great. For kids, this is a huge win. If they fly off the table and get damaged it's not the end of the world.
6. Lion Chief Plus. Enh. Too expensive to let the kids play with, too lacking in features for me to play with. I have two new diesels, but wish I hadn't bought either.
7. Legacy grade engines. Wow. Trains have come a *long* way. I bought some of the brand new Legacy grade diesel engines (the small ones that run on O36) and they are fantastic in all ways but 1 - they continually come off the track as they hit the certain O36 Fastrack switches. It's very frustrating.
8. LionMaster. ***Wow***. These are incredible. I have 3 engines: 1 UP Challenger Class Steam Loco (New, Full Legacy), 1 Union Pacific (TMCC), 1 Conrail (Older Legacy) and they are fantastic. I can't stress how good these are. The speed control is great, the sounds are great, smoke is great, the "Stay on the Rails No Matter What" is great, looks are great, and they work on my O36 layout. I plan to buy more. Many more.
9. Power. I bought the big fancy Lionel ZW, and it's worked well. Probably more than I need right now, but overall it's great and it seems pretty future proof.
10. Old Stuff. I have a ton of old classic engines and related stuff, but it's so much harder to use and I haven't wired my layout for it. As a result, it just sits boxed up.
11. Fastrack Tressles. These really suck. These are easily the worst part of the whole Fastrack ecosystem.
That's really it. It's been quite a bit of fun getting back into things, and I look forward to growing my setup as my kids get older...
Cheers,
Chris
