I have had various and sundry HO engines, both diesel and steam, plus a variety of freight and passenger cars sitting in storage in my basement for.........maybe 25 years. Tomorrow I will be visiting Home Depot to purchase the lumber for a new train table and we'll go from there. Step 1 will be to build the table and get some track down. Step 2 will be deciding which DCC system I want.......and installing it and finally I will buy an engine that will be DCC compatible. But in the meantime......we need trains under the Christmas Tree. Well.........I used a lot of emery cloth on the wheels and track....and this evening I got a few of those old timers rolling again. What a great feeling to see them creep along......then gradually increase speed as the motors loosen up. We're back in business if only for a few weeks.
Great to hear it! I just finished my benchwork for the interim layout in my garage and I'm here to tell you it's a lot easier if you can get into the walls to work on it. I screwed my girders directly to the studs and then ran braces down at a diagonal to the concrete. I now have beautiful benchwork I can stand on to put the sheetrock up on the celing (a huge effort saver). For what it's worth, I've been running dixitrax at the club layout for years and would never use anything else. It's more expensive, but ut does so much more than any other system I've ever seen. The basic decoders can be had for $15 each and if you can live without lights at first, you can make it go with 4 wires.
