This is my first post, having just been introduced to this great magazine by a fellow model railroader.

I am 72 and my son 38, and together we are building a shoulder height double track mainline layout around the walls of an average sized room. The layout will feature a mainline in Philadelphia between 1935 and 1950.The layout will be running three loco's maximum at any one time, one of which is a 1970's brass model of the Pennsylvania L6 electric loco.

Hey all, I finally got approval and funding to upgrade the Northern to sound! I read all of your advise, which I thank you all profusely for your input, and I decided to stay away from the Digitrax sound even though they were a bit cheaper, and invested in the TSU-1000 Heavy Steam decoder.

I am going to be hard wiring it to the existing wiring system and taking out the Bachmann board and DCD entirely. I have the speaker and enclosure, flux, soder, heat shrink tubing and soddering gun. 

As the title says, this is about none or minimal wires.  Some call it Dead Rail.  But as I am going to talk some about charging via the rails, I am not going to use that term here.  I am not posting this to get into DCC vr RC or who likes/dislikes touch pads.  This is to present one way to get rid of those pesky wires and rail cleaning.  

First some other discussions must be referenced:

I'm building what will be a fairly large HO layout and after scouring the internet I still don't understand which booster brands or models are 100% compatible with my MRC wireless system. Given the number of locos running at one time and bus runs limited to 30 feet, I think one or two boosters in the 3.5 to 5 amp range would be adequate until the railroad grows somewhat bigger, but I would like to choose from the widest booster selection while planning for future options.