Having not posted anything here in more than a year, I ought to explain myself.
It's a simple explanation - I was posting somewhere else. Namely the Hornby Hobbies forums and RMWeb. I also started uploading some short videos to YouTube to document my progress.
It started as a way to get others opinions and ask questions about things I didn't know the answers to, but then I started posting more and more on all sorts of topics. Recently though, I decided to reign this in for a couple of main reasons -
- To avoid getting annoyed - by others mainly (a mix of newbies asking the same questions over and over again without doing the minimum amount of research themselves, but also those who clearly spend far too much time on these forums - often just waiting for an opportunity to be right)
- To avoid wasting my time - not even posting things, but just checking threads and seeing if there was anything new
Model railways are probably one of the last hobbies where forums still have such a strong foothold, although social media (mostly Facebook and YouTube) are making inroads, but they have all the same problems that forums had 20 years ago when they made up a much larger footprint on the internet. It's a shame that they're still so equally parts good and bad. On a personal note I find myself engaging less and less with the internet so this is just a natural progression of that. I'll be back on a landline before too long...
So that brings me back here - where I can just document to myself and whoever reads these posts and build up my own little corner of the internet without the annoyances that arise elsewhere.
In which case I should give a brief overview of what I've been doing since September 2024... in no particular order.
- After deciding to abandon TT:120 and settle on OO, I ended up keeping some TT:120, building (or statrting to build) layouts in both TT:120 and OO gauge and selling most of my TT:120 and OO Gauge rolling stock
- I also built and promptly abandoned a layout in N gauge too
- Finally I started to learn more about DCC
Which brings me up to date really - I still have some OO rolling stock up for sale and I've made quite a lot of purchases recently in another scale, but probably not the one you're thinking of.
My next activity will be to sell my TT:120 rolling stock and layout. Why?
The main reason is space, and my lack of it. Unfortunately for my present circumstances, TT:120 is still too big for any kind of layout to be achievable. Add in all the factors that are still present with the scale 3 years on from launch (lack of availability namely) and it's still a no go for me.
There's also another factor that's offputting and partly the reason why I left the Hornby Hobbies forum - the almost evangelical nature of others modelling in the scale. Seriously, some of them spend more time playing the victim of modellers in other scales than they do actual railway modelling, and the rest are just building oval after pointless oval whilst repeatedly failing to learn the basics of the hobby. Add in the remainder who seem to be trying to build a social media career more than anything else and it's all just a bit tiresome. Not to mention Hornby's repeated missteps in new releases.
So if not TT:120 and if not OO Gauge, then which scale? Obviously it's N gauge.
It's the right size for me, it has the availability of rolling stock (new and used), it's proven in multiple settings and it can do what I need it to do... I think. Looking back I should've stuck with it back in 2016/17 when I had a Japanese based layout in rented acommodation rather than taking a break from the hobby until 2022.
I'll be posting more regularly from now on - but initially quite a bit more to document what I did over the last year, as it's hopefully been a worthwhile journey that others might find interesting.
