Arising from the crowd funding thread, a quick poll and thread to determine, all else being equal, if people would be willing in principle to fund / prepay for a desirable model.
I'll see about adding a poll to gather numbers? I for one would happily support any such project. I've preordered Rapids hst for example and have zero trouble paying up for what undoubtedly will be s great model and good investment.
Sound chips mean you drive the loco like the real thing. You start the engine and move off. The engine revs and notches matching your speed and brakes squeak when you slow and stop.
What I did when using it was slot the track into the foam then glue the foam to the baseboard. That lets the foam keep a nice profile and shoulder and excellent noise reduction as te track 'floats' on the foam.
If using the ballasted foam, I'd highly recommend gluing the foam down rather than pinning the track, as the foam then looks squashed
Otherwise looking excellent!
In practice not unless you were planning 2 or 3 coaches only.
From testing I did a few years back only heavy modern diesels could manage 4% gradients. Go with 2% if you want most things to manage it will decent length trains.
2% means that you will climb 2 inches every 100 inches or eight feet will clear about a two inch climb.
So you'd need a 16 foot climb to get 4 inches off the baseboard.