I'm just purchasing track, and in the planning stages of my first N layout. Before I buy any rolling stock or locos, I want to select what era, locale and road name to model. I've sort of been using Ebay to gauge (no pun intended) what is available, and wanted to run some thoughts by the collective wisdom here.
I live in south central PA, so could easily model the PRR, Penn Central, Reading or Conrail that served my area up until recently. I didn't want to go with a 'modern' road as I'd like to model the past vs. the present. I also thought it may be more fun to model something I'm not as familiar with, but within a similiar region. I sort of selected either the B&O or Western Maryland as a potential road, but I'm not seeing much available for WM and a lot of the B&O stuff is from the "Chessie" period. I'd rather stay in the 40s-60s era. Am I going to limit myself too much by picking a small road like the WM? I won't be into doing custom painting/decaling for quite some time, if ever. How did you decide, and if you picked an 'unpopular' route, how did you deal with it?
I live in south central PA, so could easily model the PRR, Penn Central, Reading or Conrail that served my area up until recently. I didn't want to go with a 'modern' road as I'd like to model the past vs. the present. I also thought it may be more fun to model something I'm not as familiar with, but within a similiar region. I sort of selected either the B&O or Western Maryland as a potential road, but I'm not seeing much available for WM and a lot of the B&O stuff is from the "Chessie" period. I'd rather stay in the 40s-60s era. Am I going to limit myself too much by picking a small road like the WM? I won't be into doing custom painting/decaling for quite some time, if ever. How did you decide, and if you picked an 'unpopular' route, how did you deal with it?