Going from one escape from reality to another

With Big A's "little pewter army men" game playing friends either busy with their adult lives or no longer in the area, he is thinking about selling all of his men that he has had for years (their market value is between $1,500 - $3,000) and get a hobby that perhaps I could take part in too - model trains. I don't necessarily like trains on their own but I do enjoy a nice elaborate set up with a working train. During the many trips into hobby stores that are dedicated to armies of bygone era (model kits you create, books, already painted miniatures selling for $300, etc) over the past 8.5 years, one hobby store in particular has one tiny section of the cluttered, jam packed store that has a little village scene that isn't related to warfare at all which I usually kill time at while Big A is browsing in the other parts of the store. My uncle has a really elaborate village that he sets up over Christmas which has a train running through it and I've enjoyed that as well. My younger brother shares this fascination with little people and little villages too although so far, his wife has been able to curb any beginnings of a Christmas village.

Over the past week, Big A has shared with me what he has found online and I must admit, I'm interested especially after he said that he would like to recreate a miniature version of our Depot Town. Thankfully, it seems all the premade items are along the 1800's era. Our first decision was HO scale verses N scale. Just a week ago, I had no idea what that meant but thanks to Saturday's trip south to a hobby shop, now I do. At least somewhat. I don't know what HO or N stand for but I know that HO is larger than N but smaller than Lionel trains. It was a tough decision. I liked the trains of the N scale but I liked the size of the people in the HO scale. Since we had limited room on the table we are going to build it, we stuck with N scale since we could do more things with it than the larger ones. In the quest to have it resemble Depot Town, there will be some liberties taken since the track will be an oval and the railroad in reality does not circle around town but we hope to find buildings that resemble what is there, Big A will paint them to look more like the real ones as well as change any signs that come on it to reflect the restaurants and stores that can be found in Depot Town. We plan on even including the clock in the middle of town as well as the (according to people who haven't spent all their life looking at it) phallic looking water tower that can be seen clearly thanks to being built at the highest elevation in the city.