Noob to railway needs advice

[Faust23]

Hi, so I'm a 33 year veteran of miniature painting, but am utterly clueless as to how to incorporate railway elements into my scenery.  I don't need a dissertation on accuracy, just a decent, "this will get you buy swimmingly" nudge in the right direction.

Here's the scenario: I'm looking to build a new Old West tabletop for my Brink of Battle convention demo boards.   The thought occurred to me the other day that it would be ubercool to have a railway and period accurate train running through the town. I have a 4'x4' board to work with and will have all terrain as separate modular pieces.

I'm looking at an S or O scale set up, but need an idea of what type of historically accurate train I should look for to get a decent setup for a generic 1885 old west town.

Thoughts?

[Cory]

Bachman's On30 train set is about the best you can do but in the $200 range, though Holiday themed versions have been cheaper after the holidays.

The various Toy store ones aren't at alll accurate or to scale but as several threads here show they can be painted up well.

[FramFramson]

The nice thing about railways is how versatile they are.

You can use them as objectives, scenario enablers (i.e. a source for reinforcments that will arive in X turns), ordinary scenery/terrain, and even as mobile scenery/terrain (train moves x inches every turn). plus you can lay different track patterns to add variety to a tabletop and use a wide variety of different trains.

I play all fantasy-type wargames, but the usefulness of railroads for making scenarios is the single biggest temptation for me to take up something like WarMaHordes.

[Willypold]

S scale is somewhat smaller than 28 mm and usually really expensive, while Bachmann's narrow gauge O scale is slightly larger, but much cheaper and more readily available. At the same time the smallness of the narrow gauge rolling stock makes them fit better with 28 mm figures.

Regarding the cost - do you just need some stuff to suggest a railroad? Go for a few pieces of track and a couple of freight cars, and skip the expensive steam engines.

[Faust23]

It's not going to be a working setup.  If I could find a dummy engine and some passenger cars appropriate to 1885, that would be perfect.

[Willypold]

If you don't have a train store close by you can always take a look at http://www.walthers.com - make an "advanced search" for On30, available items only. This is the only category where you'll find the appropriate stuff.

[Michi]

Bachmann 0n30 is actually the way to go if you want to approach authenticity for a moderate price.
Have a look here: http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=13205.0
The engines I show there have steam turbine driven electric generators for their headlights, but are actually pre 1900 constructions. Bachmann offers also 4-4-0 engines with the huge western style headlights that were lighted by liquid fuels, brazen domes and all the period details like flag holders, etc.
Coaches and cars are wooden prototypen from before the turn of the century, therefore perfect for your 1885 setup.

[Faust23]

Thanks Michi!  That's the kind of guidance I was looking for.  I'll let you know what I find.

[Michi]

Thanks Michi!  That's the kind of guidance I was looking for.  I'll let you know what I find.

Cheers Paul, there is some advice on building cheap scale tracks from standard H0 products.
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=35212.0
For an old west layout in the prairies you´d probably need no ballast though, just put the sleepers in the plain dirt and dust. I want my layout to be set in the Rockies where ballast would be inevitable to build a solid trackbed...

[Faust23]

I found some On30 and its just about perfect. Now, finding a dummy engine will be the fits.

[Michi]

I found some On30 and its just about perfect. Now, finding a dummy engine will be the fits.

Now that you have rolling stock for H0 tracks you can also try to get a cheap H0 western engine and scratch build a larger cab and chimney for it. This would pretty much do the trick. The tender would need to be widened to the width of your cars, but that should be no big deal.