Growing up my grandfather had a pretty extensive setup in his basement/rec room/man cave on a ping-pong table. The table dates back to likely the early 60's and was something that he built himself in his workshop as he liked to tinker with stuff, be it wood, metal, or electronics. It's from him that my brother & I became geeks who like to mess with how stuff works.
That was back in that 70's so memory fails me as to the scale & rail gauge he was using but I do recall spending time with him at it. As everybody got older the train setup was sold off in the mid-80's or so but the ping-pong table went on to be stored at my Mom's place, then my sister's place, then finally at my place. It seemed like the table was destined to be forgotten about, folded up & buried behind junk in my garage, until my brother called out-of-the-blue asking if he could use it for a new train setup that he & his GF are setting up at their place.
So, yeah, digging out that 50~ year old ping-pong table and then going to the local train show kind of got me going about doing something here at the house.
pictures have a universal language
They do indeed.
I like that layout you posted in that thread, it'd give plenty of room for buildings & scenery which is where my mindset is leaning towards.
the fun part is planning and building the track layout, making the electrical side work properly, and then adding the buildings and greenery for realism.
Yep, and it's actually building the scenery and working on that part of it that has me more excited then the trains themselves. The trains catch my attention from a technical aspect while creating a town has me interested creatively.
Growing up I had some and a few of my friends had some as well. It was fun and I've thought about it from time to time. But KNOW how my wife would feel about another expensive hobby.
My wife hasn't caught wind yet of just how expensive a hobby it could be but she has given the tentative OK if we agree upon a space for setting up a table.
If I do go forward with this it'll be a slow drawn out process.
I have done a couple of models over the years, I should get back into that. Also considered model airplanes, but the idea if something you can spend a LOT of money on and crash it in a few seconds.......probably not.
That's the only reason I never got into that hobby.
Model helicopters always fascinated but the thought of spending countless hours of labor and several hundred dollars on something I'd likely crash without much effort did not appeal to me.
A little bit ago I went with my brother to a local model train show and it's been making me think since. I'm not sure if my wife would really like me getting into another expensive hobby 
but I'm thinking it might be a way of me combining several of my interests into a consolidated hobby.
