I have two railroads I have started in G scale. One is European and the other is American. I like both, but it always boils down to the engines and rolling stock. The Aristocraft engines are very impressive, but lack the proper engineering as far as general upkeep is concerned. They are also filled with plastic parts so easily broken, that it becomes almost a necessity to either avoid putting them on or having a bin full of spare parts. The rolling stock doesn’t fair as well either. Piko, on the other hand, is vastly superior in their engineering of their engines. Now before I get into this too far, I must point out I am talking about modern railroading here. Not steam era. I have two Aristocraft Dash 9’s and one F7 as well as a USA Trains SD40-2. All are impressive, but again they are all so very delicate. By contrast, I have four Piko Taurus engines. These engines are so easy to work on and the level of detail is, in my opinion, awesome. Now, this is very confounding because you see, the Germans are notorious for over engineering their products and these Piko engines ought to be no exception. Yet, they are. The Aristocraft engines (Dash9’s) are way over engineered and very complicated, as far as general maintenance is concerned. I like the fact that the Piko engines are simple to operate and look nice and have a functionality that is really quite easy. They run on 6 foot track real comfortable and require far less space overall, but I long for that typical modern American railroad with three Dash9’s heading up a long stream of freight cars. Not easy, when dealing with lack of room. Anyway, I was wondering what others thought about this and to see if anyone else is torn between American and European as I am these days.
Stacy Krausmann said:
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Anyway, I was wondering what others thought about this and to see if anyone else is torn between American and European as I am these days.
When I immigrated to Canada (45 years ago) my HO railway equipment came along; all of it Swiss prototype. The first layout was in the spare bedroom of an apartment.
While I looked at NA HO equipment and envied the low cost of plastic rolling stock, I soon enough found out from Canadian modelers what the actual cost was … nerves.
Thirty years ago I decided to forget about standard gauge and went strictly narrow gauge based on what ran on the RhB between '69 and '75. Shorter trains, tighter radii, steeper grades i.e. all that stuff that happened on the proto.
Switching to IIm was just a matter of upscaling 
. The only NA itch I ever felt was Colorado proto when I saw my On3 buddies layouts in Ontario. All brass, R/C control and sound (in the 80s), if Colorado in LS then it would have been 1:20.3 . And we all know that would be as expensive as the upscale European makes.
Thanks for the story. I formally did HO, but found my eyesight and the tiny plastic parts simply too hard to cope with. I realize, I was a novice though and along side so many in here, that is truly saying allot.
I went to 0 Gage and then to G. I miss the HO for its uncanny ability to replicate entire places with utter and complete accuracy. Something that 0 and G can do, but with far greater expense and effort. Still, coming from Europe to Canada or even the United States is something else too, as far as model railroading is concerned. Thanks