I am a recently retired educator and took up model railroading back in November of 2014. I built my first layout from the ground up and made a kazillion mistakes, most of which were fixable. I used the cheapest track and the easiest to use, Life-Like's Power-Loc. While I found it to be serviceable, The switches and turnouts were problematic. I am starting my second layout and decided to go with Flex Track and go for a more realistic approach to everything.