The Main Control

The next question was how to control our happy little train. The last time I owned a train it came with a DC power pack. The more you turned the dial on the power converter the faster the train went. But that was yesterday's technology. (Remember how all the lights would go out when the train stopped because there was no electricity to power it?).

Today we have DCC. What this system does is put constant voltage in the track. It never changes. Inside the train you have a DCC control board where the magic happens. It is this control board that releases the power to the train motor. So you can imagine that your train can do much more than go forward and backward.

You can now control everything! From bells to whistles to amazing audio of the steam and crew. And it is all controlled with a highly programmable hand-held controller. And yes, even the lights, that no longer go out, can be programmed.

After reading many reviews, I went with the NCE Power Cab. As it turns out, it turned out to be the right decision for what we were planning!

The First Purchase

After spending too many late-night computer sessions checking out websites on model railroading (we will talk about some of those later), I hastily decided on going with HO scale and DCC control. In a nutshell, DCC seemed to be the latest and greatest thing and I was very lucky when I made this decision as, being a bit smarter now, I would not have wanted it any other way.

So I started looking for a locomotive. The only type of train I have ever seen at a theme park was a steam train. So I went looking for one. That's when I found this Baldwin Modern 4-4-0 Loco with DCC and sound on board from Spectrum.

I got it for a really good price and made a few other purchases (see following posts) and waited for it to arrive in the mail. In the meantime, I kept studying.

I had remembered that I had a $50.00 gift certificate from a local hobby shop that I had received last Christmas that I never used. So off I went to pick up a few pieces of track so I could test the train out when it arrived.

Amazon Credit Decisions

Christmas came to a close and I found myself with a good amount of Amazon gift certificates screaming to be spent. I bought a few items I needed and saved the rest.

That was when that little plastic Wendy's railroad jumped back to the front of my mind. Wouldn't it be cool to do a train layout somewhere? I already had a G scale train (garden scale) that I had used around the Christmas tree. But that was too big and much too expensive to buy more pieces. N scale was really small....maybe too small for these aging eyes.

So I settled for HO scale. Now what about a layout? How cool would it be to build something like Disneyland? No, it had been done. But now I wanted to make my train a theme park ride! No wait.......why not just make a miniature theme park!

I talked to my daughter Autumn and she loved the idea. So off to the computer I went.

It All Started At Wendy's

This past December, 2013, I took my daughter, Autumn to work with me, as school was out for the holidays. She decided lunch should be spent at Wendy's and she got her usual chicken strips. Along with her kids meal came a toy. It was a plastic windup "Toys R Us" train (I found a video of it here for you too see: http://youtu.be/YpFGyiDIp7c ).

This got Autumn and I talking about trains. And that got me to thinking about how cool it would be to have a train layout. Because I loved the whole railroading thing? Well, not really.

I'm not a huge train nut. I do love trains and have ridden many of them. A train trip from California to Pennsylvania was an event in my life that I'll never forget.

But I can't tell one train type from another. I don't know what track gauges are, I'm not into building models and I am terrible with wood (I took three pieces of wood and six nails and made a bookstand for my final project in high school woodshop.....sad).

But this little plastic train running around and around would come back to haunt me after the holidays.

An Introduction

 

 

 

Welcome to the Mini Theme Park Blog! We are going to have a lot of fun here as we create an HO-scale train and theme park layout in our garage. But, before we get too far, a short introduction.

My name is Don and I am a big Disneyland fan. I have worked for both the Disney Store and the Disneyland Resort and was the creator of Theme Park Video Magazine and Mouse Rap Monthly.

As I got older, I found myself no longer living in California, but living and working in Washington state, where my wife and I had a sweet little daughter in 2006.

They say you can take the boy out of Disneyland but you can't take Disneyland out of the boy (oh wait.......I'm the one who said that!) and so I created Theme Park Audio Archives and Theme Park Radio several years ago (after many years, both have since been retired).

Theme parks have always been a passion (which is tough living in Washington as we really don't have one, unless you count Wild Waves....which I don't.). and so we go home to California and visit family (and yes.....Disneyland) whenever we can (Hi mom!).

My wife works for an optometrist and loves crafts (she's good at them too!). And my daughter is turning eight years old in March, which is hard to believe and makes me feel even older than I suppose I should.

So that's who we are. And now....as a famous DJ once used to say (oh yes, I was a radio DJ for 15 years in California also) ...and now the rest of the story.....