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My wife has shown interest in making a small n-scale model train village with a steam locomotive going through it, so I looked up prices online. It appears that the locomotive alone is the price of an entire Warhammer 40k army. This is some bonkers stuff right here! Are there any model train enthusiasts here who could shed some light this as compared to wargaming (and maybe point me in the right direction while you're at it ?

Have some of this stuff somewhere, don't have the space to get the stuff out currently though, 6'x4' is only the beginning, though N can pass a bit smaller, 6'x3' is as small as I'd go though.

N scale locomotives are eye wateringly expensive, OO is a better bet as there are more sensibly priced locomotives, however the coaches cost about twice as much, when I was doing this a single train would be about £200 for a smallish one upto about £300 - £400 for a full length express rake..

Oh yes, and thats before adding the digital control equipment to it (circa £50 per loco for a good one, can be less though) - this is well worth it though.

In OO you can get kits for rolling stock which are a fair bit cheaper, loco kits are about but make gaming stuff seriously easy to build.


If all you want is a little village with a basic loop of track though its not all bad news, get something like a 0-6-0 GWR tank engine and two coaches, plus maybe five or six wagons and a brake van - forget digital, with one loco you don't need it. the track is then a single oval, two points give you a loop for a small station - control with a bit of wire in a tube or motors to taste, maybe a couple of sidings then go nuts with model buidlings.

You should be able to get a basic set that has the loop of track, controller, loco and a few wagons for sub £100, then its just a couple of coaches and off you go.

Be very careful, this stuff is highly addictive.

But to save money, get a 'set', unless you know what you're after its a lot cheaper.

Check out sites like 'New Model Railways' for forums where they can provide stacks of info.

Buy her the 40K army and see what happens!!

Wargaming isn't expensive. Games workshop is expensive.

As for model trains - different hobby, different prices, different rules.

I though GW was expensive. Then I looked at how much it would cost me to go into space. Wow, I could get two battle companies worth of space marines for that price!!

leopard wrote:
Have some of this stuff somewhere, don't have the space to get the stuff out currently though, 6'x4' is only the beginning, though N can pass a bit smaller, 6'x3' is as small as I'd go though.

N scale locomotives are eye wateringly expensive, OO is a better bet as there are more sensibly priced locomotives, however the coaches cost about twice as much, when I was doing this a single train would be about £200 for a smallish one upto about £300 - £400 for a full length express rake..

Oh yes, and thats before adding the digital control equipment to it (circa £50 per loco for a good one, can be less though) - this is well worth it though.

In OO you can get kits for rolling stock which are a fair bit cheaper, loco kits are about but make gaming stuff seriously easy to build.


If all you want is a little village with a basic loop of track though its not all bad news, get something like a 0-6-0 GWR tank engine and two coaches, plus maybe five or six wagons and a brake van - forget digital, with one loco you don't need it. the track is then a single oval, two points give you a loop for a small station - control with a bit of wire in a tube or motors to taste, maybe a couple of sidings then go nuts with model buidlings.

You should be able to get a basic set that has the loop of track, controller, loco and a few wagons for sub £100, then its just a couple of coaches and off you go.

Be very careful, this stuff is highly addictive.

But to save money, get a 'set', unless you know what you're after its a lot cheaper.

Check out sites like 'New Model Railways' for forums where they can provide stacks of info.

Wow, that's some great advice! Will try to look for a complete set then. aside from the train and tracks I have so much modeling material that the rest of the board shouldn't get too expensive... Unless we actually buy n-scale buildings...

Some of the building kits are amazingly detailed, the ones by Ratio are very nice in N scale for sure, if you're doing a model village with a train as opposed to a train set its worth taking your time with the buildings and getting lights in them.

Cheapy seasonal LED lighting is worth getting in January, one pack will do a lot of buildings, especially if you learn how to play with a soldering iron.. which with model rail you will..

Keep in mind the amount of gaming terrain techniques that have come from the model rail world, also can be a lot easier to make stuff thats not designed to be handled all that much, a lot of model rail stuff is fragile as heck.

Its like a lot of hobbies, once you get the basics how much you spend on the rest of it is up to you really.

A few years back a nephew of mine was maddeningly obsessed with Thomas the Train, and that xmas pretty much everyone in the family started collecting Lionel O scale/gauge trains. We ended up dropping something like $500 on a set that just drove around in a circle. Then I started checking out websites for old guys that had entire basements or garages or office buildings dedicated to their trains and realized I'd never have a paycheck big enough for that hobby, so I came crawling back to my army men, hat in hand.

Still fun to set it up for the holidays though.. I had it going around the tree and all, with a little village with some of mom's old ceramic houses.

Killer for me for model rail was the space it takes, for a while I had a 24' x 13' layout in the loft, basically 2' deep all the way round, bit more in the corners. The 'layout' was done very much on the cheap though due to lack of funds, wasn't much more than a single loop with a station at one end (that started out as the storage yard, it just gained platforms).

The hobby can be done on a budget. second hand locos, kits for coaches or cheaper second hand stuff. Most expensive bit was a £300 digital control set up - worth it.

You can make a good few savings though, e.g. a turnout from PECO is about £9, a motor about £6 - so £15 each (on a 24' long layout I wanted motors). Or a cheaper motor for a fiver, and the turnout made from PCB sleepers and rail for about a quid - £6 each, motorised and made to measure so they worked a lot better - Just one saving that made the layout possible on a budget.

O gauge and N gauge are both expensive, OO has the 'toy train' market, can get a starter set for about £50 - £60, loco, controller, track, siding, wagons, buildings etc included. Get the right one and you have a loco that can be turned into a passable Y9...

Just wish I had the space, Model rail gets into silly money if you let it but you can only really drive a few locos at once without automatic control... dribbles

 Mymearan wrote:
My wife has shown interest in making a small n-scale model train village with a steam locomotive going through it, so I looked up prices online. It appears that the locomotive alone is the price of an entire Warhammer 40k army. This is some bonkers stuff right here! Are there any model train enthusiasts here who could shed some light this as compared to wargaming (and maybe point me in the right direction while you're at it ?

My father made a huge model railway in HO/OO scale after retirement.

Individual locomotives run to over £100 each.

Of course it's partly a matter of what you want to achieve, because you only need two express locomotives and three or four smaller local engines for a layout.

The other thing is, you can still use the same locomotives a year later, because there aren't any rules changes that invalidate them.

Damn it you guys are making me want to get into this...

If you enjoy custom modelling....

Get the wheels & motors, or even a whole power unit from a second hand loco, and make a train.. 28mm scale narrow gauge say on 16.5mm HO scale track (get the O16.5 stuff though, it looks the part).

OrkRail? who if some of the local trains are anything to go by run the local service round here

You think model railway is expensive at OO gauge?

Wait until you get into the bigger stuff.
My brother in law does 2" and 3" gauge.





That's just ONE of his locos. Cost him more to set it up than my wife's new car a few years back. Yes, those are ride on cars behind the loco and tender.

Well, guess we can be thankful GW doesn't make model trains...

The easiest way to keep this kind of thing under control is to put it in a box.

Or rather, a briefcase / suitcase.


When your space is that limited, there's only so much money you can spend.

OTOH, if you have real money and a basement (or attic), there's nothing cooler than yard in one corner and a long track running around the entire space...

Yeah, but making everything that small costs ten times as much...

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
Wargaming isn't expensive. Games workshop is expensive.

As for model trains - different hobby, different prices, different rules.

I though GW was expensive. Then I looked at how much it would cost me to go into space. Wow, I could get two battle companies worth of space marines for that price!!

Honestly, I can't find that many people who are considerably cheaper than GW.

Fielding a full standard point game? Sure, GW is more expensive than Warmahordes. Individually model for model they're around the same or Warmahordes is slightly more expensive.

N seems a much more popular choice in Japan than elsewhere and you can (if you can afford it) get a much better selection of buikdings/terrain over there

eg at http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/rail/

I wander into the local model train shop every now and then to pick up plasticard. Its fun hearing the discussions over the till in there going on in the background and the amount of money exchanging hands. Its all just an insight though, as even if I'm not into that particular hobby, its interesting to hear all the finicky little details people go over.

...I'm just the uncouth wargaming player though who turns up and buys all the plasticard up every other month to those folks. "What're you making?" "50s Post Apocalyptia and Ukraine!!!" "...Almighty then"

Heh, if you ever get the chance, check out the Franklin & South Manchester HO layout....

Built by the man that owns and runs Fine Scale Miniatures, the buildings and terrain dwarfs the trains.





Photos by Ken Spranza, shown on HORailroad.com.

There is a reason that some of those models are so pricey....

The Auld Grump - see that horrible brown water in the second picture? Elsewhere there are kids swimming in it....

Z models are more expensive, no doubt, and you pay a bit more for the engine, but a briefcase of terrain is very cheap compared to what you'd have to spend on HO terrain. N is a good compromise, and fits in a more reasonable space.

My ball jointed dolls make trains look cheap...
And I've not spent near what some of my friends have (mine average a few hundred theirs average a few thousand, each)
To give some perspective I have 18.

This one was one of the cheaper ones, she only cost around the same as a battleforce (US dollars).

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
Heh, if you ever get the chance, check out the Franklin & South Manchester HO layout....

I think if I hadn't discovered wargaming, I'd be into model railways - and that's one if the best reasons why. But I can't even begin to fathom the sheer amount of research needed for that layout, let alone the planning, materials and building.

Actually a lot of adult (predominantly male) hobbies are ludicrously expensive. Like restoring old cars, owning boats, model air planes, golfing, collecting rare books, hunting, freemasonry, and so on.

Model railways just happen to overlap with miniature wargaming in a lot of places that relates to model building. Whenever I feel I need to explain my hobby to laypeople, I will compare it to model railroading, ,because to me, my hobby is much more a collecting and modelling project than merely a game. The 'game', I will tell them, functions like the electricity in a model railway layout, it's what makes my models move around.

Much of the reason why railway engines are so costly is because they used to build them by hand in Germany and other European countries, so labour costs were pretty high. But my impression is that they're becoming more expensive than they used to be.

If you want to see an impressive O scale display, you need to come to Cincinnati during the holidays and see the Duke Energy (formerly Cincinnati Gas & Electric) Holiday Trains. They've been on display yearly since 1946 and is one of the largest portable models in the world, measuring 36 1/2 by 47 1/2 feet long.



Its on display at the Cincinnati Museum Center (formerly Cincinnati Union Terminal) seen at about 4:10 in the video. If the building looks familiar, it was the inspiration for the Hall of Justice in the 1970s animated series Super Friends

Before games workshop I was into Hornby trains (so back when I was 8). I still had my things packed away in my parents house until a decade and a half later, where my parents downsized and I ended up selling on to people that had more space/interest.

I found old DND books, model trains and oop 40k metals all sold pretty well, the DnD books and trains all earned back more than their sticker price plus inflation in ebay auctions, which was nice.

Fortunately I had space to keep my fantasy stuff and was later able to re-invest in 40k when 6th ed landed!

Check out the Miniatur Wunderland Humburg site and the video of their miniature "train" display for pure craziness.

A company called Bachman makes some basic sets in N scale that aren't too expensive.
But HO scale is better if you jet want a holiday display layout, with N scale a cat hair will knock the loco off the track.

 snurl wrote:
A company called Bachman makes some basic sets in N scale that aren't too expensive.
But HO scale is better if you jet want a holiday display layout, with N scale a cat hair will knock the loco off the track.

Agreed Bachmann (or Graham Farish) are a good choice for N Gauge. That's actually a scale that I really like, you can get some really nice terrain setups for it.

Dapol also, a relative newcomer very reasonably priced http://www.dapol.co.uk/

Price wise an entire set-up is not cheap, it's expensive for the engines/trains, having worked in an independent that sells the stuff though I would still say it comes some short of a 40k army for a standard layout. Certainly, the components would have cost objectively much more to make (the quality of engineering and components is a really something, especially on the N-guage) so you will feel that you are getting your money's worth. You can go mental with making a warehouse layout or driving around on a train, although that's the same with anything!

If you do the layout in N scale, you can also use it to play Dropzone Commander or 10mm modern or WW2 games on.

I used to have an O-gauge clockwork Hornby layout as a child - nothing fancy, just an oval track with a coupld of sidings and a station, screwed down to a big sheet of chipboard. No idea what it's worth now; the trains must be at least fifty years old, and could be pre-War.

Dropzone Commander you say? Oooooooh... Christmas village invasion!