Hmmm. I'm returning to the hobby after a several year hiatus, and am
pretty much starting over. I have been wrestling with the scale issue,
and keep coming down on the side of HO.
I love the size of O or S gauge. The heft and bulk is impressive, as
are the detailing possibilities.
Ultimately though, it is the fact that I want to build a fairly large
railroad that drives me to HO. I simply cannot expect to have a barn
available to me, and therefore need a smaller scale to fit a reasonable
representation of a railroad in the space I am likely to have. The
compromises in train length, siding lengths, spacing between towns, etc
that are required even for HO are tough to swallow.
And N, in spite of the long consist and so forth, is simply too small
to incorporate enough of the bulk and detail that I love in O and S
scale models.
Further, I will not have time to build everything to the level of
detail I desire, and therefore the availability of kits and so forth in
HO is important.
I'd probably pick S scale if the commercial availability was greater,
but it isn't there.
So HO it is. More accurately, Proto 87, assuming a module I am planning
turns out to operate well enough.
=====
-Steve Wintner
"Story's always the same
Seven hundred tons of metal a day
Now sir you tell me the world's changed
Once I made you rich enough
Rich enough to forget my name."
-Bruce Springsteen
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