Howdy folks. My name is Rich, and I'm from central Indiana. I'm not retired, but now that the kids are all but grown, I have the time and a little disposable income to revisit model railroading, which fascinated me so when I was young. I may be a bit of an odd duck, as the history of the American railroad, while interesting in its own right, isn't a big draw for me. I imagine my layouts will be largely fictitious, with only a passing nod toward chronological accuracy. My interests lie in those machines of years past, themselves, and modeling the way of life of the people and activities of the crews involved in the industry.
I've never wired a train set beyond hooking up to the two screws on the feeder track section on the old Lionel figure eight set I received for Christmas as a kid, so I've got a lot to learn. I'm starting with an NTrak module, that I can run with a local NTrak club. I'm sure it will be a valuable learning experience for me. My first fixed layout will be a HO scale (space permitting) rail system traversing a number of different environments, incorporating tunnels, bridges, mountains, industries, bodies of water and whatever else I can squeeze into it. I plan to run both steam and diesel locos on it. RailPro will certainly be my control system of choice.
