Research and Inspiration - Part 2 - Setbacks and costs

The internet is your friend when it comes to ways to spend hours of non productive time looking at things.  Equally so, it can be a boon when comparing, contrasting and getting information on specific things.

By now I'd established that I could get a trainset that would run in the garden for a reasonably modest price - say £225 - but, and there's always a but, it would only come with a simple circle of track, wouldn't be DCC (so would be like the trainset I'd had as a child, with one train on the track at once and speed controlled by altering the amount of power fed to the tracks) and wouldn't come with sound or smoke.  Sound or smoke would add another £50-£100 (depending upon manufacturer) for a more deluxe starter set.    DCC starter sets seemed a rare commodity - at least in G (for Garden) scale: I think there is a bit of a presumption that by the time you reach DCC levels then you know what you want and have a fair amount of kit - locos, wagons, tracks etc - already, so it becomes a question of conversion rather than starting from scratch.  One starter set - the Aristocraft  Silverton set - seemed to offer promise with it's radio control and basic train manager system, but again (because of the way it works) I'd be limited to one train on the track at a time: it wasn't DCC how I envisaged that.  For that I needed the Ordinary Train manager rather than basic train manager and that was of course, more expensive.

There is a whole raft of systems out there as well, and it was hard to get a basic understanding of what each system did for your money and its limitations and complexity.  No easy solution.  

Ann by now was being supportive, especially as the diet regime (remember the diabetes diagnosis) had caused some weight loss towards target weight (at this moment in time, lower is just good), and dietary changes had caused blood sugar levels to also drop.  I'd started to feel much less fatigued: basically because I wasn't putting (fruit) sugar into my system that it couldn't cope with.  In an attempt to eat healthier a couple of years ago and cut down on the chocolate biscuits, I'd moved to having a fruit smoothie to get two of my "five a day" and eat the fruit bars, and snack on dried fruit and trail mix etc.  Healthier in terms of less fat, but my body was starting to collapse because of age/genes/previous lifestyle and the diabetes (unknown to me) was probably setting in.  However, any trains as far as Ann was concerned had to come with sound (chuff-chuff), whistles (woo-woo) and steam.

There was also a setback.  A brief garden survey revealed a flaw in my plan (aka the step).  

It may only be a 4" step but that meant that the path around the lawn wasn't level.  There was a corresponding rise and fall on the other side of the lawn as well.  At that point I didn't know what gradient a model train could cope with, but it would clearly require some thought and investigation.