Starting cost of a 1st class layout?

Train hobby cost is kinda like a buddy of mine in the tree business says.......'how much does it cost to cut a tree down?'  There is no one set answer. You can spend at your level. The WBB 4-6-0 steam loco is cheaper than many diesels out right now. Street price is under $200 and it's a great loco. Then there's secondary market......or used!! I bought a nice set of 1990's era conventional LIONEL SD-40 power and dummy for $150 at a train show. For rolling stock you can spend $90 for a Atlas Master series freight cars or Atlas Industrial at $30........MUCH less at train shows and ebay. I have a limit for most freight cars at around $20......passenger around $40.

 

  What it boils down to is you can spend $200 on a loco or $2000. Same with cars. I bought a lot of what I have back when I was a Sr Analyst and had more......'free' money to spend. Find an era you like.....read about the different locos and cars....and find some in your comfort zone spending wise......

Thanks Dave, I guess I should just come up with a plan and start pricing it out.

I’m sure a lot of the O-scale layouts that I’ve seen here so far are probably over $20K I'm guessing. I have about $8K to $9K in my N-scale layouts and the highest I’ve paid for a loco is $350 only I have a lot of them.

I probably will only have 1 or 2 nice trains in O and I may even run my Christmas trains just for fun

I got seriously involved with O-gauge less than 3 years ago. My total outlay for O-gauge equipment is less than what you would spend for a new articulated loco. I've bought everything second-hand and repaired a lot of neglected items because that is what I enjoy doing, and because I'm naturally frugal - which is how I financed early retirement. And now I have a very satisfying assortment of mostly vintage trains in working condition, with no great ambitions to get more of certain items. I am happy to wait for any bargains that happen to come my way.

 

So what I'm saying is, the hobby can be economical if you don't dive into buying lots of new items. I see how some folks get into impulse buying and that can get really expensive.

 

Another facet to consider is, how much space do you have for a layout? I don't see a point in buying way more items than I have track space for. I buy trains to run, not to sit on shelves.

 

The bottom line is, the hobby can be expensive or relatively economical, depending on how you choose to pursue it.

 

My MTH Zephyr was another secondhand repair project - failed PS1 electronics that I eventually managed to reboot.

I like to buy broken and not working items and fixing them too.....I got a MTH Premiere GP-30 for $50 because it did not run and the owner just new he had burned up the motors. I took a chance and it was a DCU.....a WBB $25 unit and it was fixed!!! If you are able it's cheap and FUN!

Space is a problem because I have no idea where I’m going to live yet, but it has to be big enough for my wood shop and my railroad.

I have bought a few older steamers off of eBay that need a lot of work. I just this month discovered a place to buy parts and I may be looking into fixing them up. I also have a whole box of transformers, but only a couple actually work and at least I didn’t pay too much for them. The shipping was more than the transformers, but I think I’ll probably spend some money and get a good one.

The first decision you might consider is if you're going to run conventional control or command control.  No since picking up good deals on conventional only engines, no matter how cheap, if your real interest is command control.

That kind of depends... do you want scale or "toy train?" Scale is expensive (especially with factory sound and remote control) but if you like the "toy train look" steam can be cheap, especially if  you get creative. For example, you can get a Polar Express O scale set from Amazon for around $265 right now (sometimes cheaper). Sell the 3 cars for $50 each on eBay, the transformer for $75, and the track for $25, and you have a very nice (brand new) Berkshire for only $15...

"Affordable" track is another story, depending on what track system you decide to go with. FastTrack for example is pretty pricey - easy to spend more than $500 for enough of it to build a 4x8 layout.

Good morning! May I suggest you consider an around the walls shelf type layout? You could put the woodworking equipment in the center. Used equipment in good condition is the most economical way to build your collection. Besides, it's fun to go to train shows and see what shows up. You can also get good deals on this Forum. Merry Christmas

Getting into three rail in a casual way today for me would be RailKing.  After working on quite a few RRs I have come to appreciate the feature rich qualities that MTH delivers in the RailKing line with decent details and tons of fun.  IMO it can not be beat.

 

Also, RK has lots of good stuff available in the secondary market. 

 

As far as cost I would hazard a very soft range of several hundred to a few thousand.  Many variables.

 

Get in with a bunch of local guys and go to some shows maybe find a club  or two.  That will help you develope your own personal direction.

 

 

 

 

You don't really need a basement to build a O gauge three rail empire.

A large unued room, an attic space or a room that is over the garage would be examples.

I would think with all the hills in California, there might be plenty of homes with walk out basements, also?

Another thought is to purchase a smaller less expensive home and build a train room addition. Some have even purchased  a prefab steel building for a train room and these are not all that expensive.

 

Enjoy your retirement.

Depends on the size.  Depends how much scenery and detail.  How big?  How much track?  What level of detail?

 

Obviously a single track mainline with a couple passing sidings and a small yard is going to be less expensive than a double track mainline with a classification yard and an engine terminal.  Wild guess: The former might could be done for ~$25k, the latter would start closer to $75k.

 

I've seen photos here of some forumites layouts where I'm pretty sure they have upwards of $10k in autos and figures alone!  Factor those in along with structures, an operating signal system, scenic materials... Oh well, you got to pay if you want to play.

 

Merry Christmas everyone!

 

Pete

Johnny

There are three basic constraints, Time Money and Space. You seem to have the time issue solved. Start with some basic trains that will run on any o-gauge layout conventionally.  When you have your house rough out how much space you will dedicate to your layout. Go to your local hobby shop and get a few books on layout design. 

 

Stay on this forum and any question you can think of you will gets answers and suggestions

 

Have fun

Steve

" May I suggest you consider an around the walls shelf type layout? You could put the woodworking equipment in the center."    Woodworking and trains in the same room,I don't think so. It is hard to keep a layout clean. Coming from a fellow woodworker. 

I recommend MTH Rail King locomotives because they are the best value and rugged performers. You can get plain Rugged Rails locos or highly detailed Imperial locos for less than half the cost of the scale stuff.

 

Scale size trains look poorly on track curves less than 072, so scale trains need a lot of layout space. Rail King has a scale height and width, but the length is truncated to enable running on track curves of 031 diameter.

 

It's the illusion that counts, so consider that a Rail King loco pulling a consist of 8 cars will look very realistic. The Hiawatha Hudson and the N&W J are both Imperial Rail King with 7-coach (10.5" long cars) Rail King consists. These trains are almost 8 feet long!

The Blue Comet has 8 cars and the Southern Crescent has 7 cars. My layout is an around-the-wall type that is 24 feet x 12 feet. Mainline curves and switches are 042 minimum.

just to comment on your sight issues, you're definitely not alone there, but let me assure you, bigger trains do not necessarily mean larger hardware.  when i got my first Aster kit (1:32 scale, #1 gauge), i thought, "great, no more tiny screws to deal with" only to find that the most common screw in the lot is 2x4mm going down to as small as 1.2mm.

 

on the other end of the scales, i recently helped a friend install lighting in their N scale morning daylight where i had to wear my highest mag reading glasses (3.0x) UNDER a set of magnifiers.

 

generally the larger the scale, the more details can be added, hence some hardware is always going to challenge your vision.  proper lighting and an assortment of visual aids can solve almost any situation.

 

good luck with the project.

cheers...gary

You might want to purchase a book on O scale layout plans. They usually have  a shopping list of track and accessory components. You can price them out at several vendors or at your local hobby shop depending on how close you are to one. I wish some of the many project layouts in articles here and elsewhere had a rough projected cost to them to avoid pricing all the components out to determine if these are affordable projects..none the less, a book of project layouts can inspire your own versions \ variations as well...best of luck!

Ditto on the value of MTH Rail King and other traditional size trains. Here is the MTH RK Northern I ppicked up for about $200 used. It looked like it was never run but only has Loco -Sound so some folks pass it by. But for me....a BIG good looking loco.

Well Merry Christmas, I must have slept in today which is unusual and I’m overwhelmed by all the replies. Ok so where do I begin.

 

I actually did think about running track around the walls of my N-scale train room over my existing layout and even bought the board and hardware, but it would have been too high and I wouldn’t be able to reach it over the N-scale layout. Also the corner entrance door to the room was a problem so I abandon that idea.

 

Here is a couple of plans I had of my outdoor patio, but I live in the desert and the dust and heat are a problem. The first on is up against the house and the second along the outside of the patio and I had a Vertical-lift bridge to go out the back yard.

 

 

 

I have a 3 car garage for my wood shop and other hobbies, but I just can’t fit it in because of all the stuff I got in there. Plus hazards of moving lumber around, large garage doors and saw dust make it difficult. I do have dust collector system but it still get dusty.

 

I just made some changes to my covered patio and back yard landscaping so I might start thinking about that area temporarily until I sell my house. At least I can run my Amtrak

Whoa! What are you saying? Is that not a real loco? Nooo that can't be an O-scale model!!

 

OMG I just noticed that there aren't any tracks. Wow!

Thanks JohnnyB....a stock MTH RK Northern that I weathered......PS...runs like a top!

If you do go this route and want fastrack do yourself a favor and don't sell off the fastrack that came with the starter set since it'll cost you way more than any $25.00 to replace it since individual fastrack pieces generally go in the $3-4+ range.

Thanks, I probably will not do that because I like keeping everything original with the box and it’s very hard for me to break up a set. I do have the Polar express already for my Christmas Layout and have bought a few non-Christmas cars so I’ll still be able to use the Berkshire which I really do like except that it doesn’t have sound.

I know there are external sound effect systems with small speakers to go around the track that I could add to it. I’ve never heard one outside of YouTube so I don’t know how well it works

Anyway I was looking through my photos of my O-scale stuff and found one of my Amtrak

You are a pretty good photographer too. I have to say if that were sitting on tracks, I would not have believed it.

I am impressed with the weathering on the Northern.

 

back to topic.

 

A track section runs about 3 dollars each to 10 or more each depending on where you buy it

 

Switches are steep. A hundred and change each. So careful track planning with thought to your switches is a must. I refuse to use small switches due to experience from two HO scale railroads so... they take space but I know I can reduce trouble.

 

I may bend a bit and use small switches for the Yard switcher Drill.. but larger engines cannot go there.

 

Regarding cost. I enjoyed the top end locos and they easily approach 1000 dollars. The O scale train for example is 5 MTH 18 inch with people and interiors and one GGD reefer. That train set was 250 for the pass cars and another 75 to GGD for the express. Throw in a 260 dollar hudson and a 170 helper and you are getting close to a thousand.

 

Buildings? I have gotten used to the concept that they cost about 100 each. Particularly the Woodland Scenics. They are simply just way better than I could hope to do with my medical issues so... I will plan a thousand dollar town.

 

And so on.

 

Where does all this money come from? Well... little by little. It takes me 6 months to a year or more to save up for it.

 

The benchwork from Mianne which is a custom maker of kits that you put together yourself can be around 200 for a section with legs and top. You can do better from a Lowes and own tools.

 

Shelving? Literally just a board.. Maybe 8 feet by a foot, assembled into a crude train storage. I have one that is approaching 40 years of service and still doing well.

 

The model railroading is a journey and I have been told time and time again that this is therapy that takes you away from your real world cares now and then.

So I was out sweeping leaves and thinking again about a railroad out on my patio, but it’s just too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer, so I have to get that idea out of my mind.

 

Then I went into my shop and it’s just about wall to wall cabinets, roll away tool boxes, and power tools.  I do have one corner filled all the way up to ceiling with camping and fishing equipment that might be promising and I might be able to build something below the ceiling to store the stuff as long as I can reach it.

 

I measured up the space which looked bigger than it actually was and I drew up a simple track plan to fit up against the corner just to see what I got. I have to think a little more about it, because I not sure how much space I have above and how much space I need vertically.

 

I already have almost all the track in FasTrack including one switch, but I have to say that I’m a little disappointed, because I will not be able to run the Amtrak. I don’t think I’ll be satisfied with that small of a layout.

 

That's not a bad layout you sketched, but if you think you will be disappointed, don't start; start it.  Find a way to compact all those wall cabinets and tool boxes until you can expand it to greater size and wider diameter curves if you want them.  But do realize: not matter what layout you have, you will always find some reason to say "If I only had another foot of so, I could so much more."

Some questions for you. Are you going to buy ready made buildings or kits. Before we moved I started buying building kits and working on them to get a head start on the layout. Also are you going scale or toy type of layout. Are you buying used or new rolling stock? What kind of track, power and control system. All this can be overwhelming if you have to buy all this at one time. Start planning now and possibly buying. Look on E-bay to get a idea what things are going for if you buy used. Good luck, Don

I’ve been thinking about the buildings and I have bought ready made buildings for my brother in-laws layout so I know how expensive they can be especially O-scale.

 

I’ve spent thousands of dollars for buildings on my n-scale layout. I have over a hundred buildings and some are still in the box. I started out with ready built building and then went to kits after it took shape, but it has a lot more scale miles of track than I’ll ever have on any O-scale layout I have.

 

Since the O scale is so large I should be able to build a lot of stuff myself in my shop. It was a lot harder to do N-scale with the tools I have and I did actually build some buildings from scratch that weren’t available as a kit.

 

I don’t have a problem buying used, but I have to say that I have seen too many items on eBay that were cheaper new at online train stores, so it depends. I always shop around.

 

I’m undecided on track. I have quite a bit of tubular track and enough Fastrack for a small layout. I also have some extra RealTrax so I’m kind of up in the air about that. I started buying Realtrax because Fastrack didn’t have the dia curves I needed at the time, so it depends on what will fit the layout space I end up with.

 

The power and control system is something I’m going to need help on, because I just don’t know. The MTH Z-4000 Transformer has been recommended to me, but I think it’s more than what I’ll need. I’m really looking for sound and I’m just so confused as to what I actually need. Right now I have 4 CW-80s and also some older Lionel models that I can’t recall at the moment

Sleeper, keep Gargraves in mind. It's the cheapest way to go and your not held to any set curves. I think Gargraves and Ross switches are a winning combo. I buy all of my building kits on E-bay. Some are very old kits that you seldom see anymore. Love those old unbuilt kits like this one I finished a month or so ago.  Don

That looks pretty nice Scale Rail. I have to decide on what I’m going to do before get to involved with buying buildings, but it would make sense to buy kits now and build them after I retire when I have more time.

 

I do enjoy assembling them. I have a few that I’m working on now in n-scale. This is that last one I completed for my yard.

 

I was thinking about this all day at work and I’ve come to the conclusion that I just don’t have enough room for an O-scale layout. I want to be able to run long trains on double mains.

 

So I’m just going to start looking for a nice locomotive with sound and collecting cars, track, and buildings over the next 3 years to when I retire. I’ve been doing some reading on the Digital Command and I don’t think I’ll need that, but I might change my mind later.

 

I watched some YouTube videos of shelf layouts above the doors and windows and I don’t like that much. It wouldn't be too bad if it were about 5 ft of the floor, and I just don't have wall space for that.

 

I’m also back to building a 4’x20’ single track dog bone layout on the covered patio using the O31 track that I already have, but I need to wait for spring for it to warm up.

Sleeper, the nice thing is you have time. I retired about seven years ago. Did the same thing your going to do. Move. I started out as simple as my wife saying, "we need an adventure". It's not easy. It's not like when you were young and a bunch of friends came over with their pickup trucks and you feed them Col. Sanders Chicken. We moved off the mainland so it was even harder. We found a great house with lots of room for a layout. If your really going to go "O" gauge just spend time thinking about what you want in a layout. I never thought I would want any fancy control system, but my wife bought me Lionel's and a whole world opened up on my old layout. I could run any engine I wanted, uncouple any where I wanted, switch trains, it goes on and on. I love building things but now I also really love running trains. I scratch build the Shell station. You have lots of time and on this forum, lots of help. Don

Thanks Don for the advice. I sure know what you mean about moving. I’ve accumulated a lot of stuff over the years and most of it is heavy. The wife wanted a new refrigerator this Christmas, but I told her it would have to wait because I’m not moving it in 3 years, plus I need the extra room for my trains. LOL We can always buy a new refrigerator.

 

And Oh boy is that sure is a nice looking shell station. I love the detail with the lights and oh the tile on the roof wow. I’m looking forward to doing stuff like that in O scale because there seems to be a larger supply of materials to make stuff out of.

 

I did a small building from scratch in N-scale but it doesn’t even compare to that. I just couldn’t see well enough to get that much detail, but I accomplished what I needed. I had to carve the outhouse, propane tank, and the block walls on the building out of wood, but I’ve since found a lot of other materials to use.

 

 

The electrical was rough getting to scale because I couldn’t find anything that small, but I found that cutting ping pong balls and bending phone wire made microwave antennas.  

 

unless a model comes out that you cannot live without, i would advise you to put off most of your purchases until three years from now.  collections and even modern, new-in-the-box items are continually available at deeper and deeper discounts and with the glut of 3-rail equipment already out there, i do not see that trend stopping anytime in the near future.

 

in regard to your O31 dogbone layout.  not sure what sort of bridge you have in mind, but a curve lead-in to a bridge or tunnel is sometimes a problem with over or under-hang that you might want to test out before cutting roadbed.

 

cheers...gary

Sleeper,

 

I have a 6x12 layout in the garage.  It will come down soon after I finish it.  I already have ideas for the next layout. 

You can find deals, it just takes some time understanding what needs to be passed up and what needs attention.  Also sometimes a little gambling in making a purchase on gut that you can make minor repairs to get it up and running and save significant money at the same time.

I think the track is a big decision.  I have Fastrack - it is what I will use for a long time, why? cause I have a ton of it, but I think that a more permanent layout, gargraves and ross is probably the most cost effective after reading here at the forum for a few years. 

I pretty much have got to the point I dont fall in love with anything in particular.  I will sell stuff if it means I can improve my layout. I picked up a RailKing Daylight, so my Amtrak will go.  I was given a bunch of LGB, it's already up for sale and the funds will probably go into scenery.

As a long time collector of 30 years, I have come to the realization that all those years of buying was a waste. I will never use all of what I have.

Reality is now a 16' x 28' layout with four loops. Since I can only run four train sets at once and perhaps have one or two in the sidings that's all I need. That's six sets total on the layout and I have 25 sets. A few extra engines and cars may be used once in a while .

This leads me to my point. Most home layouts can only run 2,4 or maybe 6 trains sets at once. Add a couple of spare engines.  That should be plenty for what you can run. Spend the rest of your money on lighting, some accessories, scenery and you'll have something nice.

The train hobby can become a hoarding sickness. Hobbyist's buy, buy, buy more and then the stuff stays on the shelf hidden in boxes. If you just carefully choose to buy what you like, what you need and aren't afraid of buying good used stuff, a home layout can be built for a few thousand dollars.     

Pete not to be contrary, but I had a professionally built layout 17.5 by 9.5 that included 3 levels and a large mountain that was added by the builder who resides in Colorado.  He delivered it to my house in Western, Pa and set it up for a total cost of about $7,500.00  It included all MTH scale trax and 10 switches. It was wired for both DCS and Legacy.  I had to ballast the track and complete the rest of the scenery.  The large mountain that effectively was over two levels was painted.

I think some enjoy throwing around big numbers hoping some of it might rub off on them.