Return to Model Railroading

 I have always had a love of the model railroad hobby, and over the years I have tried to get into it with very little success.  Back in 2007 I started a home switching layout but I quickly got discouraged and quit.  A few years later I traded/sold off all my trains to my friend Tim and I didn't look back.  Tim got back into the hobby around the time he acquired my collection and has started a small layout in his game room.  Even seeing lots of ,y old stuff on the WIP layout has not been enough to rekindle the interest.  Then last weekend Tim hauled me out to a local modeler's railroad for an ops session.  Rick has a large but rather spartan railroad in his basement.  It is built for operation and it runs very smooth.  After about 5 hours running trains it is safe to say I am hooked again.  You see some pictures I took of the railroad and the session below.

My entire experience with the hobby has been based on technologies and products that were common in the 80s and 90s and those were all based on tech from the earliest days of the hobby.  Since then DCC has been invented and has become old. With my renewed interest in the hobby I am also interested in new techniques for layout building and control.  Much of the hobby is still rooted in 50+ year old tech and ideas and I want to take this opportunity to rethink how to do things.

Tim and I are going to start up a little modular group (basically me and him) and we both want to try ideas that we have used in our wargaming terrain projects.  This is going to be an interesting journey and I really hope this return to the hobby has legs.  Stay tuned for more updates.