Like many people in the O gauge world, my areas of interest tend to be driven by nostalgia for the trains that I had when I was young. Of course, the prime example of this is my interest in O gauge windup trains, which goes back to my first trainset - a Marx #526 with a mechanical 401 locomotive. But what does that have to do with this post in the HONGZ forum?
My parents bought me an N scale trainset sometime in the mid 1970's, a Bachmann set with a little 0-6-0 steamer. This was the era of the black & yellow plastic boxes that held locomotives and rolling stock, as well as the white & green packaging for accessories. I "modeled" in N scale for many years, acquiring various brands of trains, but the old Bachmann trains were the starting point. I eventually got rid of most of my N scale.
Fast forward a few decades. While digging around in a closet, I ran across a box that had a few "Old Timer" Bachmann N scale trains in it... those came out later, and I had bought a few pieces just because I loved the look of them. I thought it might be fun to build a micro-layout with a simple circle of track so I could run them once in a while, but I needed track. So, I went on everyone's favorite online auction site to look for the old 9" radius track... and that was a mistake.
Yes, I found the track. And trains. And buildings. I bought some track first, a couple of vintage blister packs with 9" radius, 45 degree curved sections and 9" straight tracks like I remember from my early days of N scale. There was also a later blister pack of rerailer sections. Of course, what I discovered is that the early 45 degree curves aren't very consistent, and the resulting circle of track looked more like a tomato! I bought some slightly later vintage Bachmann 9-3/4" radius, 30 degree curves that are much more consistent.
Of course, the problem is that vintage Bachmann trains are available on the internet, too. It didn't take long before a few vintage Bachmann pieces arrive at the house, in all their black & yellow boxed glory. But, they still need somewhere to run.
So, I took a scrap piece of 1/2" MDF and cut it into a section that is almost 2' square except for the round section at the front - that was already part of the scrap piece, but will work fine for the micro-layout. I covered it with Woodland Scenics grass mat - another leftover that was hanging round the scrap box. Staple down a little cork roadbed and nail down the circle of track... and we have the start of a layout:
And that's as far as I've got. I am thinking about putting a backdrop down the middle to split it into two scenes, and use vintage Bachmann buildings on one side, and old west style buildings on the other. When I run the old-timers, I can look at it from the old west side (been watching too much Gunsmoke lately, so I'll probably call it Dodge). When I run the newer equipment, I can view it from the 1970's vintage Bachmann building side. Neither side will be fine-scale modeling; it will be merely good-enough to showcase the trains and buildings... similar to the toy train look of my O gauge windup layout, but in N scale.
I suspect progress on this will be very slow - but that's OK. I'll try to update this thread if/when there is any substantial progress.
PS: For anyone interested in Bachmann/N scale history, here are a few interesting sites:
https://billsrailroad.tripod.com/history.html
