Hi there fellow märklinists!

I'm new to the forum and sort of new to the hobby. I had an M-track double tracked layout with the T3 set "yard" when I was ten. I'd run my little steam loco (BR38) round in circles pulling a few wagons. I seem to recall that box cars were my favourite. Scenery was limited to a green painted board and a few model kit houses.

Fast forward some twenty years and my wife and I are (finally) leaving the city for a smaller town where real estate costs are more reasonable. Since being "given" a room for hobby purposes I intend to finally build that childhood dream of a layout with multiple train operation capacity and decent scenery. Last fall, I picked up a track planning magazine and found the perfect track plan, or so I thought. It was a three level dogbone with a centrally located station. Unfortunately, the area was 3.5x1.5 meters which is a little too much for my plan for the room (I also want to fit a board game table and chairs in). First I glanced at building modules instead, but while doing research I found that most 3-rail module builders in Sweden seem to live on the other side of the country.

Simultaneously, I was going through a 81852 z-scale start set with the intent of ebaying it to finance my plunge into the digital railroad world. I'd bought the set six years ago when intending to build a small layout in my student apartment. It had seemed like a smart thing to do back then, only that being a student I was too preoccupied with doing other things, even studying at times. :p However, the loco was suffering from congealed oil due to prolonged storage and I had to take it apart, clean it and re-lubricate the parts. While looking for instructions on how to do this online I stumbled over the website of decoder manufacturer Velmo. They produce a lovely little setup where you simply exchange the original circuit boards of the larger of Märklin's z-scale diesels and electrical locomotives for new circuitry with DCC-decoders included. This discovery in combination with the excellent* running capability of my newly cared for locomotive led to the decision to go z-scale with my layout and keep running my occasional H0-adventures on the floor.

We're moving in a couple of months, so I'm afraid that there will not be much construction prior to that but I will keep you posted on my planning.

*My Ipad (ModelSpeed app) clocked it in at 1.6 kph in scale speed.

Thank you Ian!

Hey Rob,

Great links! The Swiss fellow is definitely on to something. He makes good use of the space. Thanks for sharing.

Kristofer