Dan Padova posted:I too visited Northlandz, maybe six or seven years ago. As GRJ and RT pointed out, it was disappointing. Hardly any trains running and those that were making the rounds were two and three car freights with a single F3 or Geep at the head end.
The original builder probably had grand plans, but it appeared, to me, that he may have taken on too large a task and got bogged down in building endless mountains and wood trestles.
IMO, HO is hard to keep running in an exhibit layout. Heck, I had problems running it in a home layout. The benchwork needs to be perfect and overbuilt to avoid warping. The track needs to be very carefully laid. Otherwise, the trains derail or stop running. I believe DCC in HO may have helped things a little, but still harder to do than using O. Also, many of the O gauge displays I see are using tubular track. That helps because the rail height is taller, making it more robust for trains to run on. The train in the display in Philly Penn station would do mechanical station stops. It occurred to me that this let the motors cool down. That layout ran non-stop over the holidays. KISS is the motto for display layouts, unless you have a large crew and excellent engineers.
George
