Another expensive hobby in the works

Yesterday moma and I moved all the hobby stuff in from mancave to the hobby room in basement. Momma saw my old N-guage model railroad stuff I brought back from Germany in the 80's. Now with momma approval going to spend winter and a lot of money rebuilding the layout.

All track needs to be replaced (rusted),a lot of the catenary system(overhead electric power lines)have to be replaced (Arnold who made the 'dummy' system I used is out of bussiness, have to use far more expensive metal catenary masts and towers a $6.50 a mast, and $11.50 a tower). The 'City' buildings are in good shape, some repairs but the POLA company again is out of bussiness so got to use the more expensive 'Faller' models.

I am going to DCC the exsisting loco's so they will be sent out here soon to get done. The old layout was analog so a lot of new tech to learn in wiring, but such is the adventure. Ordering track sets from Atlas and will do an 'L' shape, 12foot along long edge, 4foot wide and a 4X4 foot 'leg' of the 'L'. Basically 2 4X8 sheets of plywood in an 'L', going to use 1/2in pink insulation as groundscape, can carve what I need and how I need it as I go, also good sound absorbtion so not to get the model train on plywood rattle.

Will try and get pics of my wargame mini's up today, and an inprogress of the trains as I go.

My father had an extensive HO scale layout when I was a kid. It wasn't all that interesting for me since it had been there for as long as I can remember.

Now that he's rebuilding from scratch after losing the old one (along with tens of thousands of dollars worth of antique steam locomotives) Its become more interesting to me, PLUS my oldest son enjoys it as well, so we help 'Pa' with his trains every chance we can get.

They're getting their new house on Nov. 28th, and he's already got extensive plans for a playroom, complete with his train layout.