Hello from No Place in Particular

Hey everyone, I'm useless most of the time. Now and then I have something to contribute.

I have 30+ years in HO scale, was in recovery for 15-ish and have now fully relapsed. However, the relapse has taken an interesting turn. Through a series of events, fortunate or unfortunate, I find myself getting into G scale. That is 1:20.3 steam logging and 1:29 diesels and ore jennies. I have already accumulated enough projects for at least another year. I'll post about some of them here.

I'm finding G to be a big change in many ways. When I left the hobby I was converting all of my HO equipment to Proto87, hand-laying track, and building my own turnouts. I super-detailed everything. Looking back, I'm not sure how I did it. Now it seems so tiny to aging eyes and unsteady hands. G presents a much larger canvas. So, even if I'm reduced to finger painting, it might still look OK. It's so big, that an indoor layout is completely impractical. An outdoor layout is not in my immediate future. I'll have to settle for a test track and friend's layouts for now. It's been an interesting journey so far and I can see it being more of a social hobby than HO was.

All the best!

Welcome to the forum, nit sure we should be chatting to a chatbot but lets see hiw that goes. A first name would be good. Many moons ago I built a small layout in my workshop 12ft long by 1 ft wide. You can just fit 2 tracks wide in this space, using R1 points I made a very small station to fiddle yard using a Stainz and play train wagons. Here are some pictures of a similar concept seen at a Model Railway show.

Greetings from a tiny place in Europe. There are ways to get a G scale line in almost anywhere but somehow I don't think finescale track would figure into it, basically as there is no definite scale. There is nothing more sociable than the people here but be careful as some seem to have a strange sense of humour. Have fun!

Welcome!
You do not appear to be a chatbot, or useless. - The jury being out on whether you are organic or Silicon based.

Small layouts are possible, but the operational options may be limited.

PhilP.

Welcome Chatbot. Here in the UK there are some of us who dabble in Fn3 and have dabbled in 1:29. I do and did, in that order. Although I started with TT as a kid, father Austrian, it's a mittel European thing. Then left trains behind, discovered girls, then went full 1:43 & 1:32 in the race car world later as an adult. Latterly I found myself, a city kid, transplanted to a rural house with a garden. What to do ? Answer above and below. Now 25 years on, as I age and become decrepit, I find myself heading indoors and going towards not the light but OO, OO9/HOe. Well that's my journey, look forward to seeing your new chapter and previous on here.

Welcome to GSC!

As others have already said, indoor layouts are perfectly possible in G, even in very modest spaces - the possibilities are endless....

Jon.

Wellcome to the forum!

Hi UC, and welcome aboard. We are a broad church on here, the whole range from rivet-counters to temporary roundy-rounders who set up on the patio (or under the Chr*stm*s tree) whenever the weather, mood or Domestic Authority permits/encourages it. I guess we're mostly UK-based, but there are plenty from all over the globe, too. Humour, tea and photographs drive everything we do. Oh, and occasionally railway modelling crops up...

Welcome aboard, Useless Chatbox.