At a Crossroads

[mark dance]

I agree with you 100%, Mark.  Sometimes, I like to have a train running in the background when I'm working in the layout room.  I don't want to have to wear headphones while I'm working on something else.

Thanks,
DFF

While wearing headphones can be annoying and interfere with other actives, my experience with the radio headphone set up is that it is also just directionally wrong.  The sound shouldn't be in your head it should seem like it is coming through the air from the model that is supposed to be creating the noise.  So even if you had ultra lightweight ear buds or a "bonephone" collar or something like that it would still seem contrived.  The sound signal generator would have to know your position relative to the loco and adjust the stereo signal to simulate this directional attribute.

Anyway that has been my experience.  I spoke to Lance about it at the Portland National and he acknowledged the short coming.  Maybe he was being polite...I was even a bit surprised to see it in MR's 1000 edition as it disappeared off his web site a few years ago.

md

[conrail98]

Phil,

Your HO Bug blog sums it up nicely.  Yeah, purging the rest of my N scale stuff will not be fun, but the incentive is more cash for the hobby coffer.  I dumped a significant chunk of my fleet earlier in the year, so I think I can unload the rest of my locomotives on eBay easily (that said, I will keep a few of my N scale locomotives, e.g., my BLI Atlantic Coast Line E units).  The rolling stock won't be as much fun to sell, so I'll probably sell them off in small batches of cars to make it less work, even if it affects the overall sales price.

Just to add, I'm still in this place a bit. Health issues have taken the desire of the hobby away for the past number of months. I do keep looking at the HO starter sets my kids have and play with and think about just building out one of those Lance Mindheim's layouts or a generalized layout. Watching Thomas Klimoski's You Tube channel of his GNRR layout (featured in MRP 2016) and keep thinking that's something size of what I could do in the available time/space I have,

Phil

[nuno81291]

Moving to HO and going off the bat to DCC/sound has reinvigorated my involvement in the hobby. There are pros and cons to every scale. The relative mass of HO to N (especially viewed eye level such as I set my shelf to do from a seated position) is a big driver for me. I am very happy overall with my HO shelf layout, I can't imagine building a sizeable n layout anymore, dabbling with some modules is enough for me. Now On30 is a whole different ball game and I want to build a small layout as well in that scale.

[chicken45]

Damn...what is it with this place and N scalers named "Dave"?
 

[pdx1955]

Damn...what is it with this place and N scalers named "Dave"?
 

Just don't be named "Dave" and model N on a door - as the urge to go "bigger" manifests itself in more than one way ! 

Seriously though, its being a model railroader first, as scale is secondary. Most of our journeys in this hobby are pretty fluid...

[unittrain]

I had kicked around the idea of going HO but the cost is prohibitive, modeling a class 1 mainline requires way to many cars that would run the cost way to high, I've been collecting N for 16 years and have massive car fleet so I'm way to deep into N to switch, N scale has decent to excellent detail and the same car in HO would cost nearly twice as much. Also I like running lots of 85' and 89' cars and with N I can have decent curve radii to accommodate these cars. I also like not having my scenes too compressed. So N is where I'll stay. In my opinion to model class 1 mainline action decently N is the route to go unless you have a huge space just for trains and a very large hobby budget.

[Denver Road Doug]

Having left N "officially" in the past year or so, I can relate.   I was enticed to Z-scale, initially as a second scale even though I swore I would not do that.   But I saw a path that allowed me to make the move away from N and still achieve most of what I wanted to do.   I was disappointed that N-scale had seemed to stagnate after the "China Syndrome" factory shakedown and frankly I was just looking to do something different.    I was sort of evaluating the N-scale sound issue too, and decided that it amounted to an overhaul of my fleet anyway so selling it to move to Z or gutting it for N sound was about the same.    There's no real option for sound in Z of course, but I wasn't sure that wasn't my preference anyway.   I know, a lot of odd logic but in my mind it interrelated perfectly.

And now...well...N has had a bit of resurgence with finally released sound equipped SD40-2's, tons of containers, new airslides, and finally my favorite freight car ever with the ScaleTrains.com carbon black car.   Yet, I really have "no regerts",  and in fact I'm also looking to HO as my ultimate end game.   I'm firmly entrenched in Z for the next 8-10 years, but eyeing HO sound, carbon black cars, and just about unlimited availability of items to get a layout built before I die.

[davefoxx]

Moving to HO and going off the bat to DCC/sound has reinvigorated my involvement in the hobby. There are pros and cons to every scale. The relative mass of HO to N (especially viewed eye level such as I set my shelf to do from a seated position) is a big driver for me. I am very happy overall with my HO shelf layout, I can't imagine building a sizeable n layout anymore, dabbling with some modules is enough for me.

My experience exactly.

Now On30 is a whole different ball game and I want to building a small layout as well in that scale.

Haha!  Gotcha!

DFF

[Dave V]

I was setting up trains on both of my N scale layouts today and I totally agree about the lack of heft.  My Blackstone HOn3 locomotives weigh several pounds...they look and feel like real machines.

[davefoxx]

I was setting up trains on both of my N scale layouts today and I totally agree about the lack of heft.  My Blackstone HOn3 locomotives weigh several pounds...they look and feel like real machines.

You should pick up my Bachmann On30 ten wheeler . . . if you can!   

DFF

[Missaberoad]

So at what point do you trade your soul to the devil to master the blues? 

Go with whatever makes you happy. If at some point you decide to change again or even switch back to N then this will still be time well spent.

Only one thought to consider, it seems to me you get alot of joy from mainline running... Will you be able to achieve this in HO and if not will you be happy with a switching pike?

Damn...what is it with this place and N scalers named "Dave"?
 

As far as I know there is no N scale modeler named Dave here anymore! seem to remember a few but they must have disappeared  

[seusscaboose]

Delta Bravo

[basementcalling]

While wearing headphones can be annoying and interfere with other actives, my experience with the radio headphone set up is that it is also just directionally wrong.  The sound shouldn't be in your head it should seem like it is coming through the air from the model that is supposed to be creating the noise.  So even if you had ultra lightweight ear buds or a "bonephone" collar or something like that it would still seem contrived.  The sound signal generator would have to know your position relative to the loco and adjust the stereo signal to simulate this directional attribute.

Anyway that has been my experience.  I spoke to Lance about it at the Portland National and he acknowledged the short coming.  Maybe he was being polite...I was even a bit surprised to see it in MR's 1000 edition as it disappeared off his web site a few years ago.

md

Mark, doesn't the direction depending on if we are the rail fan or engineer? If we are watching trains, then sounds should come from them, but if we are the operator in the engine, wouldn't the noise best be captured by surrounding you and blocking out other noises?

[chicken45]

Someone better tell @DeltaBravo that he has to change to a larger scale.

[davefoxx]

Well, here it is, in all of its Horribly Oversized goodness:



I love this thing!  It has confirmed that my choice to dabble in HO scale was the right one.  The Seaboard Central is just about two feet to the left out of the picture.  I ran an N scale train simultaneously this afternoon, but it just wasn't the same.

Up next, the newest dilemma: track planning.  I know that I have long spouted about building a shelf layout, and there are tons of advantages to shelf layouts (larger curves, more efficient use of the space, etc.), but the ease in building an island-style layout is appealing.  Drawing me back to an island-style layout are some of the project layouts that MR has built in recent years, as well as the fact that I can no longer plan on finishing the layout room off first.  I don't know how long we'll be in this house, and due to some issues that cannot be ignored for much longer (e.g., roof and master bathroom shower), I'm no longer willing or able to put thousands of dollars into finishing off this basement space at this time.  That said, I can probably take the funds from the sale of the Seaboard Central 2.0 and use that to fund much of the new layout (if kept to a reasonable size).

A layout plan that I came across on Model Railroader's website is this HO scale Rice Harbor layout.  What I like about it is that it can be a 5' x 8' layout, or you can disconnect it into two halves and it becomes an L-shaped layout (different spurs will reconnect the mainline in its multiple configurations).  This will allow for expansion and less chance of outgrowing this layout section.  I already know how to build the folding shelf!



DFF