Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Welcome to Rice's Rails

I've decided to try dragging myself into modern times by writing a blog to collect various tidbits about my model railroading adventures.  I have tried maintaining a web site, but quickly end up distracted by technical considerations - sitting there with an html editor opens up too many possibilities.  The result is my web site hasn't been updated in over 5 years.  While I am a bit slow getting work done on the model railroad, I'm not that slow!

Like many folks I started model railroading at a young age with a Lionel set.  A bit later I got into N scale, then progressed through HO to On2 (I read a book on the Sandy River & Rangely Lakes RR and got hooked).  Then two things happened - I started to get more interested in operation, and SoundTraxx released the first DCC sound decoders.  I saw and heard them at the big Springfield, MA train show the first year they came out, and I realized that I had to have sound, and that the decoders would not fit in the tiny available space in an On2 forney.  That realization was sinking in while I was standing at the huge Southern New England Model Railroad Club modular O scale layout.  A couple months later I had some O scale standard gauge equipment (with a soundtraxx decoder installed) and a plan.  A few dozen plan changes later I had the beginnings of a layout.  A few dozen plan changes after that is my current O scale switching layout.  I'm also in the process of constructing an N scale switching layout, because I want to model some industries too large to fit in my basement in O scale.

As time permits I'll post details on both layouts and perhaps some of the rejected plans, and whatever else seems relevant.

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