dont bite off more than you can chew

Dont take on too much at one time. Pick on small project and get that done. If it was me I would do a small structure just to get started and work on one little scene just to get away from the plywood and track image.

Your Son

What a blessing that your son wants to play trains, that should be the number motivator right there. I have three sons and none of them likes it. Go with him and runs some trains on the track. Wherever it runs rough, fix the section and run some more. How do you eat an elephant ? A spoon at a time !!!

you're one lucky guy...

...to have a young boy that is interested in trains.

The first thing to do is get your track repaired. Nothing will get your enthusiam going like seeing a train running reliably over the rails. An NMRA track gauge is a cheap tool that will pay for itself in no time flat. Take your time and enjoy the process, the dividends will pay big.

Secondly, you may want to simply go with manual turnout controls - either Caboose Industries style, slide switches & piano wire, or sliding gate bolts like Joe Fugate has on his fascia. That will keep the cost down, give you more "play" value, and your son (or you) can play brakeman/conductor as you walkaround with your trains under DCC.

Third, grab one of your broken plastic structures and repair & detail it OR pick a plan from one of the magazines and build it yourself with wood & glue. Better yet, ask your son to pick the structure to build or repair and work through the project with him. It will teach him useful planning and problem solving techniques.

By this time you should have so much momentum going it will be hard to stop!

Best of luck and keep everyone here updated with your progress.

Sons

I guess I am lucky my 17yr old son and I do RailRoading and Dwarf Car racing together we have a blast.

DCSnr

Thank you for the replies. I

Thank you for the replies. I realize that my son's interest is very precious.

Here is my game plan: no long range plans and one thing at a time.

First thing. 
Put every thing away and get down to track and a train. I told my son we can have up to six cars in our train: a locomotive and five other cars, including a caboose. This way we have only the best running rolling stock. Those long trains would either derail or uncouple and we'd spend half our time backing up the locomotive. Also, with less rolling stock on the layout, there be little chance of collisions (that's what happened to my steam 2-4-0. It hit a box car and took a dive).

Go DC. I have two DCC locomotives, Thomas and a 2-4-0 and the front end is smashed up on that one. We'll use his DC Red Sox F-Unit (it's a Bachmann, I think). I have one loop and a two track "yard" so the DCC wired track works fine for the DC. I've already unwired the toggle switch between the two and put away the DCC components. 

Scenery? None. Small boxes will do for industry. 

Next. Get the track rough spots ironed out. 

Good way to start

 Your on your way to getting back into the groove in the hobby.

One thing that you may sort of dislike (eather because of the waiting for glue to dry so you can continue to have fun or because you finish it too fast) will be scenery. It's enjoyable, and is sort of like scratchbuilding. The only problem is:

1.  you'll have to be certan that the materials don't wind up on the track (or in your locomotives)                              
2. You'll could have too much fun with scenic building, and you'll be sort of upset when it's officially "over" (unless you would like to re-work details in a scene, or add new "mini-scenes" with simple stuff, like a campsite or small cabin)

   Don't worry. The main one is to make sure the stuff you use (wether it be plaster for rocks, or real sand and dirt for a desart or beach) doesn't end up in the locomotive (admittedly, that happened once, and the locomotives are still dropping bits of ground foam)

Who knows, mabe you will like it so much, you will just want to (re)build scenes over and over, mabe re-creating fond childhood memories.

Scenery

Fellows,.

I dreaded the bare baseboard . A friend showed me that a mix of glue and water 50/50 or so. Spread along the benchwork and the foam and sand mix sprinkled on is a great way to make the thing look better. The sand is a bag of washed sand from the box box hardware , $4 or so , the foam at your hobby shop for about $8 a quart jar . It goes a long way. Even mixing the colors of the foam and varying the sand / foam ratio changes the look of areas .

A year later....

Wow, I wrote my original post almost a year and a half ago.... 

I suppose I should give an update on my layout.

I've been slowly turning my folded dogbone into a P shaped layout by cutting out one of the loops and extending the layout through a wall.  The former loop and the extension are all 2x4 sections with a sheet of homasote as a sub roadbed. I really like the homasote; it allows me to spike the flextrack and turnouts down, then easily pull them up and change the track as a figure out the best plan.

I have four locomotives, all DCC and about a dozen cars in good order. My son and I are running informal "ops"; building a train in our "yard" and switching out along the layout. 

The next set is to work out industries and build mock ups, then figure out more formal operations.

How's It Going?

So it's been a year since this last post, how is the layout coming? Are you still building it and running trains, or has it become another dust collector?

Ken Biles