Finding The Right Hobby Train
Finding the right hobby train entails more than just deciding on what era the train is going to reflect. By this, it's meant that the train set needs to do more than look like a real train from the 1800s or the Big Locomotive era of the 1920s and 1930s.
How much space a person has to build up a train set environment will always be a prime consideration when dealing with these sorts of hobbies. Size matters, as they say, and size of train and the area in which a train's tracks can be laid down will be something to be looked at in a logical manner.
Hobby trains come in many different sizes called "scales," which is the most common way to reflect the relationship in size to the real trains they emulate. For example, an O scale train is a 1/48th or 1:48 scale of the real deal. Hobbyists also know that like real trains, the better indicator of size lies in the gauge of the track the train rides on.
Gauge in hobby trains is just like gauge in real-world trains. It has to do with the distance between the outside rails of your train's track. In the O scale (or gauge) example used above, that's about 1.25 inches in width. This size is just one of several aspects involved in finding the right hobby train, and the tracks themselves may look different from the real ones, depending upon gauge.
After it's been decided to go with having a hobby train set, take some time to research on the matter of the size of the trains to be gotten. They can range from tiny - as in the case of N scale, or "postage stamp" trains, up to some that a person can actually sit on and ride. Most personal home hobby train enthusiasts set up environments for N scale (1:160) up through O scale.
Probably, the three most popular scales that make the most sense for enthusiasts are N, HO (1:87, or half the size of O) and O scale, or gauge. If all that's available for a train environment is a small table in an apartment, N scale could make the most sense. The trains are tiny but extremely well detailed, as are their environments.
The most popular size seems to be HO, which can be even more detailed, but which can require something larger in terms of space, like a 4 foot by 8 foot area, in order to lay down a really nice train and village scene, for example. And for younger children, who tend to be a little less tactile with fingers, the bigger the train and its associated environment, the better.
It's remarkable, the kind of detail that can be expressed in some of these hobby train environments. The houses, cars and natural scenery can be as expressive as the trains themselves. If there's not a lot of space, go with as small a scale as practical. Something like an N scale, works well, in fact. If there's a whole basement floor in which to run tracks, something larger like HO or O scales may work better.