Model Railway Forum

Hello all,

My 11 year old son and I are about to embark on our first model railway. I had a basic set up as a kid and my son spied it all boxed up in my mums attic many years ago. He’s nagged me ever since but now I feel he’s old enough to look after it, I’ve just seen the price of one of the original 125’s .

My plan is to ‘go big or go home’ and have bought my son a raised bed so to maximise the layout size in his room. I’m planning on a 6’ by 6’ but with a hole on the middle so he can crawl underneath and pop up in the middle. Basically a 2’ wide strip running in a 360, if that makes sense. I haven’t even bought the wood yet so any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Over Covid lockdown my son and I made some WW2 Dioramas and thoroughly enjoyed it, never done it before by by the end we were mixing epoxy to make rivers, etc. looking forward to applying these skills to the model.

We’ve got grand plans with a harbour, lakes, mountains, bridges, although we could be getting a bit over excited..

Any advice or pointers to the best threads on this forum would be gratefully received.

Thanks

Dave & Luke

Welcome Dave and Luke. Lots of help available here.

Hi Dave and Luke - Welcome to the forum. As WTD said, lots of help and information available on here - just ask. Best of luck with the project. BB

Hi Dave and Luke. Welcome to the Forum.

Do not have the trackwork 'complicated'. Keep it 'simple'.

Be able to run the layout with one person, because a lot of the time only one person will be running it. (You can be making a cup of tea. -- Been there many times. )

If any scenery (or whatever) gets broken etc. don't argue. (It can be fixed. )

Keep it fun and it will reward you tenfold.

Just my 2 centsworth.

Glencairn

Hi Dave & Luke
Welcome to the forum.

May I suggest rather than giving answers to you re your baseboard question here in the Welcome forum, you may like to post a new topic in the forums "Baseboards" section where it should receive more views and possible answers.

I have always liked to get some track down and something running. Doesn’t have to be permanent, perhaps roughly what you want. You can spend many hours planning what you want on paper but once you get the track down things will probably change.

Welcome to the forum Dave and Luke. Many hours of fun ahead of you both.

Thanks for the welcome all,

It’s really hard not to get caught up when you see all the complicated layouts, I’m working out the 2% gradient at the moment

I have to remember it’s my sons track and I’m just helping, maybe I’ll do my own

Can’t wait to get started!

Welcome to the friendly helpful forum. As said before, don’t try to cram too much in.

Welcome. An exciting project! Don't be put off by high prices as decent secondhand can be purchased at reasonable prices.