What if I choose N scale instead?
Diesel locos: anything made by Kato. This includes the Kato brand engines as well as the items recently offered by Atlas. The Con-Cor PA-1 was the first Kato diesel imported but most of their more
recent offerings have not been. These don't come cheap, most being in the $80 to $100 range.
Bachmann has just introduced their first Spectrum engine in N scale (a Dash 8-40C.) About the half the price of the Kato and runs well but the body shell is not quite up to the standard of the Kato
engines, although the paint work is nice. The regular line Bachmann is less expensive than these but require some work to get them running realy smothly in most cases.
Life-Like have improved the quality of their engines over the past couple of years to the point where they make a good, inexpensive alternative to Kato. Although the paint work tends to be less
detailed, it is acceptable. These engines run well at low speeds.
Rivarossi have a reasonable reputation in HO, but not a very good one in N scale. The problem tends to be mechanical with motors being too rough and burning out quickly.
For freight cars, the best quality is MicroTrains. These range from $8 to $10 for cars with basic paint schemes up to $30 for the TOFC flats with semi trailers. Their couplers are also a great
improvement over the Rapido couplers. The easyest conversion is the trucks with couplers mounted, but I prefer to body-mount couplers. MicroTrains also hase conversion kits for a large number of
steam and diesel engines.
Track: In general, PECO is recognized as the best, especially for their turnouts. Atlas have been making improvements to their track over the last while, but they still have a lot to learn about
turnouts.