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Many a amateur model railroader will decide that, instead of HO, they prefer to build their railroad empire using O scale model trains. While the bigger trains may appear easier to work with and just plain more fun they can also be a source of frustration to the inexperienced. These are some typical mistakes made with O scale trains.

Is your turning radius too tight? While the minimum turning radius for an O scale train is twenty-four inches you have to understand that box cars and passenger cars are not the same length. If you are recreating an 19th century freight route you may be fine but if you decide that instead you would like to run a modern Amtrak passenger train you could be plagued with derailments with such a small turning radius. Besides the functionality of too tiny a turn radius you also have the glaring fact that it just doesn’t look that practical.

Are your inclines too steep? Most new model railroaders envision some kind of tunnel or bridge in their layout where the trains will run underneath its own track or up over the roads the cars travel. When you are working in smaller scale where you have room to build long inclines this isn’t usually a problem. Not so with O scale. Given the height required to clear another train track your O scale layout will need a very long incline indeed particularly if you’ve created a long train to begin with. You are not going to go from ground level to train clearing bridge height in only 2 feet. If you do not have huge layout, one solution is to send your lower track a little underground so that your higher track does not have to rise as much.

Is your landscape out of scale? Even though a locomotive is higher than an one story house we must remember that in the real world trees still tower over trains. No where’s this single mistake made more than with O scale train layouts. The same scaling mistake is common with outbuildings and folk. When purchasing any accessories or buildings for your layout make sure that you know it is to scale and not that it just looks to be the proper scale.

Does your train match your track? Unlike Ho scale where everything just about works alongside everything else, O scale modeling can truly be confusing when it comes to matching the proper track to your train. Since the early days when these toy trains were run on glossy three rail tracks there have been some major breakthroughs that include two rail systems, more authentic O gauges and the option of running O scale trains on narrow tracks. Do your analysis before purchasing even your first train set, because once you have chose a track, you’re stuck with it or will be doing a major overall down the road.

Keep these typical mistakes in mind when arranging your layout and it should make building your O scale train layout much more delightful.

Emil Sudhakaran is a model train expert. For more great information on k line model trains, visit http://www.modeltrainsguide-emil.com/ho-model-train/.

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