The key to a successful model train layout

What is the key to a successful ho scale model train layout?  Is it a bunch of expensive ho scale model train engines racing around the train track or possibly the gauge you choose?  I believe the key to successful model railroading is creating the model railroad to fit your personal tastes.

There are many types of scenes you can create for your ho scale model train set.  Do you like urban scenes?  If so, you might want to build an ho scale model train layout with a huge city and have your ho scale model trains running through city buildings and stopping at a large urban model train station.  Your ho scale  model train could weave its way through downtown on its way to the many houses you construct for the suburb.  You could even have more than one ho scale model train station.

Perhaps you like rural settings.  You can have your ho scale model train work its way through a country landscape consisting of farms and ranches.  Your ho scale model train will have cattle cars to pick up the livestock at each of the ranches  where your model train stops.  The farms might have an old white farmhouse and a big red barn straight off a picture you would see in a book.  The scenery will have many varieties of trees around the farmhouse.  As your ho scale model train leaves the farm, it will travel through crop field scenery you have created on its way to the processing plants.  The possibilities of a rural ho scale model train layout are endless and only limited by your imagination.

My personal favorite  ho scale model train layouts are hills and mountains.  There is nothing like seeing that ho scale locomotive  coming around the curve out of the tunnel in the mountain you have built from scratch.  Another favorite mountain scene is the ho scale model train going over a bridge of a deep gorge through the mountains on its way up the tracks.  You can put all kinds of pine trees in these mountain scenes to make them lifelike.

We could go on forever but, hopefully I have spurred on your imagination and possibly even given you some ideas to make your ho scale model train layout special to you and those who get the opportunity to watch your trains in action.  Remember, choose the  ho scale model train layout that best fits your personality and let your  imagination do the rest.  Good luck and happy model railroading.