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You can do lots on a minimum budge, but unfortunately it requires some degree of skill, BUT... if you can post at a local hobby shop that you are looking to join a modal RR club or group and are accepted, snap it up. If you can join a group, its kind of like an apprenticeship. Here is why I recommend a group to get skills: 1) Save money by scratch building 2) Save money by building your own track and turnouts 3) Save money building your own throttles 4) Save money using free stuff or almost free stuff out there, for example, river silt, sand (especially train sand), rocks, colourful dirt from all over 5) Make your own trees There are more, but in all of these you need some skill. Now trees are easy to learn, and so what if you blow it, they are so cheap. A friend of mine did all of the above I have listed. His layout is one of the "cheapest" around, but by the way, it is also the best layout around as well. The river silt he used in his yards. He built his own throttles. Train engine sand was used for ballast. He used spruce plywood but no road bed, the spruce takes spikes beautifully. All his track is hand laid, including the double slip with "operating frogs." One of his structures he scratch built made it into the feature modeller section of the Feb issue of MR 1980. I would say his entire layout cost about $500 (spread out over time) but it occupies about 2/3's of a basement. So great layouts can be built cheaply, but you have to know what you are doing. First there is so much wood out there available for free, or next to nothing, you should be able to get benchwork up fairly cheaply. Buy track and turnouts at shows and buy second hand track and turnouts. At one point I was broke but I wanted to make a structure. So I found a pill container, added car body putty on top of it and shaped in smooth but domed, and turned it into a water tank (I'm in N scale). Just yesterday, I was looking at the lid of a particular brand of ice cream (as I was throwing it away) and decided it would make a great HO swimming pool. So there is lots you can do with little. On one of the Track Ahead programs, a guy was featured who built his entire layout out of junk; it didn't look like junk, in fact it looked great - but he was able to do amazing things with items we would consider garbage. Another good way to get the skills you need is to join a modular club and build a 2 by 4 modular unit. This will take you a long way to learning layout skills.
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