Thanks!

Actually if I can piggyback on this thread.  I too am new to this hobby and just received my first train.  it's a Bachmann HO scale Union Pacific.  Right now we have the standard circle track going around our Christmas Village.  I really wanted to try the below layout in the link, I call it the pretzel.  I'm not sure how to convert it to HO scale?  Nor what additional pieces we would need?  Our platform is roughly 42" x 42", so I'm not sure if the pretzel would give our village more room or less...

Any help is greatly appreciated!

pretzel layout

As an early Christmas present we received the Union Pacific 4432 HO scale in November.  It's our first train and we love it.

It says to lubricate the engine every 24 hours of use.  We didn't hit that mark yet, but in a couple weeks the train will be packed away till November.

Do we wait for the 24 hour use mark to lubricate, or lubricate before putting it away or after pulling it out?

Any tips would be greatly appreciate it.

P.S. we do have the Bachmann track cleaner and used that as the train was stalling on one track.  It works great now, even better than out of the box.