Starting out the inexpensive way

[butch1]

Wife bought me a Disney Train at WDW.  I made wooden pieces with a "fin" on the bottom to put in garden gravel; the track sits on that.  We made a loop in the garden, and it has been up for about 8 weeks.  I have been buying New Bright and Scientific Toys sets at Yard Sales.  The stuff runs amazingly well.

We bought expansion track, and will be expanding our initial loop, and adding a figure-8.

I think the plastic track from Scientific Toys is working well for me, but wish they made switches.

Just thought I'd share my experiences so far.

[vsmith]

Scientific trains (your Dizzyworld set) run OK but its a bit noisy to me, New Bright does make switches, they show up on Ebay quite often, but New Blight (as I call them) track and Scientific track are not interchangable, the joiners are on opposite sides, but if you cut them off, then use a peice of wood underlayment or can use the "fin" method you describe, you can simply align them, screw them down and your good to go!

[altterrain]

Is the track UV resistant? If not you may want to give it a couple a coats of paint or UV inhibitor. I remember seeing an article in GR from over a decade ago about using plastic track outdoors. I'll have to see if i can find it.

-Brian 

[Rene Schweitzer]

Brian,

That was in the August 1996 issue, p. 42.