So; what took so long?

Well, a combination of many things but mainly the constraints of the space I have available. There are so many choices in the hobby these days that it is really hard to decide exactly what kind of layout to model. You can choose from so many different past era's up to the present. There are so many different road names or you can make one up. You can do short lines, branch lines, main lines, logging railroads, mining, industrial, city, country, mountains, east and west, anything in the real or imaginary world is possible. What kind of layout? Switching, loops, point to point, set up for operation or just a backdrop for fancy modeling or scenery. Then there is scale. G, O, S, HO, N, Z or a narrow-guage version of any of those? The photo shows a side by side comparison of HO and N scale. With all the choices available , my first choice was always HO scale and in the transition era in an eastern mountain setting. I love steam engines and 1st generation diesels and it is the era I grew up in so it was a natural choice. Also HO has the biggest selection of choices in suppliesand equipment
That is where the problem and frustration with my space came from. One of my main criteria for a layout was that I could sit back and watch the trains roll through my imaginary world when I didn't want to be actively operating or switching. This would require a loop of some type. In order to operate certain types of locos and rolling stock, you have to maintain a minimum radius for curves and loop sections. Because of the space and location it was about impossible to come up with any sort of track plan that would fit my space. You wouldn't believe some of the options I came up with. They all required taking on extra space in the house, cutting holes in walls etc and still every plan had a flaw in it that after days of planning would in the end be too impractical.
So, plan B was to use N scale and hope that in the future I may be able to build my dream layout in a larger space. I decided that I would not duplicate in N what I wanted in HO but would instead model the modern era. There is much more equipment, although more and more transition era stuff is coming out monthly. But in the structures there is still very little in the way of modern structures available so either era would require a compromise. I went ahead and worked out many track plans and finally chose what I wanted but I was still not happy. I could come up with a great track plan and N scale is very conducive to running long trains and building impressive scenery in a small space, but I still had some problems with N. As I mentioned the structures but also the details. I like the detailed scenes and the amazing structure kits available in HO and that is one of my main attractions to the hobby. I know there are many people that have done some fabulous things in N with details but they are so small that I can hardly see them. They look great in a well planned, blown up photo but in person I just can't see things that well.
So now I had to make a decision. No matter what choice I made it was going to be a compromise so I had to just decide what the most important things were and plan to use those and be happy. And so after nearly starting a modern n-scale layout( which still has some appeal to me) I have made the firm decision to do an HO layout in the transition era.
I also considered doing a Civil War era layout. I am a big fan of the history of that era and I love the old trains like the "General" but there is almost no prototype equipment available and a person would really need a lot of skill at scratch-building rolling stock and structures. There are however a lot of figures available through Musket Miniatures and some other companies.
In my next post I will detail my plans a bit more than I did in the introductory post and then on with the construction!