Hey I've always wondered what are those teeth in marklin tracks for?

Hi everyone,

I've always loved model railroads and as a kid I always dreamed about having a layout like I saw in catalogs and museums. But being young I didn't have the money, time or patience to really get into this hobby. I used to play with HO trains then moved to N scale but never acquired a large collection. I gave up on the hobby about 15 years and got into the usual stuff like computers and videos games as was the case with people from my generation. A few weeks ago I was working with someone and during some downtime he pulled out some diagrams. I knew what they were the minute I saw them, they were track layouts. We started talking and he was starting his own HO layout in his basement, we pretty much talked for 3 hours about it. It got me thinking that now I have the financial stability and maturity to really try get this hobby going again.

Times have changed since I was into the hobby, now there is this thing called dcc which I still don't really understand and so many new options. I want to do this right and make this something I will be proud of. First of all I'm torn between N scale and HO, I really enjoy the detail of HO but N scale would allow me to make a larger layout and a smaller space. Another thing is growing up I spent lots of summers with my family that lives in Europe so I'm really into the Swiss and German alpine styles. But i've done some research on Marlkin and the prices are pretty steep.

Lastly I'd like to know if there are any websites or catalogs with basic how-to things so I can do this right step by step. I'd like to try and have a plan on how I'm going to get this all done so I don't spend or waste money on mistakes.

If anyone would be willing to give me some tips or recommend some books or websites I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks.