Trains Models

When I come back in Italy ..... Jimi Hendrix was dead, and I've a family to attend, so I forget my RR passion for several years and my modelling effort range from wood ship (vessels) to cars.

But, when my father die, I discover a box in my mother basement.
And as sson I opened the box … an old Rivarossi 2-8-8-2, two other steam loco’s and some other old rolling stuffs are locking to me as old friends!.
Immediately my original passion blow up again!

OK this was just the start. I make some mental consideration about my ships
( see my "Sails & Ships" page ) to justify to me ( and most important to my wife ) the growing of the old love, and ..... That's what follow.

At the moment I have no space in my home for a layout, but, ( combinations of the life, eh?) we are planning to buy a new house because we need more space. Bit a bit, we select one and ... magically in the new house there is a basement ! Not so big as my dreams, but "good enough" ...
We plan to transfer to the new basem... ehm.. house at the end of this year and so I start to plan a layout, select place and era I like, document about and ... start to collect steams and rolling stocks.
In the mean time .... I start to scratch build a little diorama of Chama ( see "My Structures" page ) but during the way ..... I chose to model in my layout the commuters on the SF Bay and the Santa Cruz mountains.

Why "US" Railroad when you live in Italy ?
Primary was because I always love the US steams, the variety of wheels arrangements, the differences between Railroad Companies and ( why not?) the multitude of colors of "Classic" trains.
And, secondary, this is an excuse to remember me my old time, when, as young man, I trail to conquer the world, and settled for some years in the Santa Cruz bay, 80 miles south of San Francisco.

A "pen friend" from SF have write me : "we all (modellers) are "romantic" ....
That's a BASIC concept !

Why "N" scale ?
As before, primary because the models I’ve found, coming from my youth, was in this scale.
I’m always privileging the feeling that a model give you, instead of “rivet number” and N scale give the opportunity, given a limited space, to model the “scenery” and give more “spatial” emotion. This to me.

Additionally, in the same space, you can have more tracks...., or better:

• one of the main advantages of N-scale over HO-scale and that is the "Scenery to Track Ratio".
• better radius on curves.... that minimal 18" radius in HO scale now becomes a broad radius in N-scale where long cars and passenger equipment are starting to look good. To make 'em look REALLY good, go with a 24" minimum radius, even on fairly small layouts. Use this radius (or the largest radius you can fit in) on your visible trackage, then hide the smaller, but still fully functional radii inside tunnels, steep/deep cuts and hidden fiddle/staging yards.
• Length will be to your advantage in N-scale too, as the length of your trains can be nearly twice as long.
• Longer run between stations. Consider making your sidings shorter to actually give yourself longer runs between stops.
• However, because the N-Scale equipment is small, modelling is much more difficult than is the case with larger scales. Unfortunately, this is in conflict with my age ….

The last generation rolling stocks are miles distant from the one of 70’ both for details and technology, and DCC and sounds are not a dream too.

N-Scale has become increasingly popular in the hobby, and it is estimated that 20% of RR modellers are now in N-Scale.

Have fun .... that's a Basic rule!