im fairly new to the hobby and inhereted my fatherinlaws HO collection, was thinking bout buying a couple new locos and wondering what brand yall preferred. the stuff i have at moment runs but is dc only and has some age on it. 

I lived outside of D.C. briefly, and since then, I've thought it would be fun to try to scratchbuild an HO scale set of Washington Metro's 1000-series railcars. I'd given it a try way back then using styrene and wasn't happy with the results. (I also had never built anything with styrene before. I still haven't built much with styrene!) I'd posted on either the AMR lines or Freerails forum at the time.

I had a question pertaining to the use of steam switchers particularly geared towards the Great Northern but also other transition era railroads as well.

I recently came across a GN 0-8-0 yard switcher in one of my books on the GN where classification lights were added periodically for service outside the yard in Grand Forks, ND. My question is what kind of jobs were steam switchers used on with the GN and other roads requiring them to go out on the mainline?

I keep reading about P2k when talking up grades, It's greek to me .  What is P2k referring to ?  Thanks Zeke