Imagine if you will a short train lead by a GP-9. With three boxcars in tow, it draws near to you causing vibration in the ground and purring soothingly. It's about halfway between the turnouts on the run around track and drawing nearer. The train suddenly stops, there's no whoosh of air from the brakes, just silence. This model, with no sound system, has managed to draw you in with its purr and the clack of the metal wheels.
This is the goal of model railroading... To have a model draw you in, make you forget that it's not real, and fire your imagination.
The hours of work I spent getting the railroad reassembled and rewired were worth it, even if just for the 15 seconds of the above scene. Surprisingly to me, there was relatively little track cleaning that needed done. I probably spent 15 minutes cleaning about 20' of track to get it all going, which is nothing compared to what I've done with my Ntrak module... and the track there only saw no use for a year, not the three and a half of my HO.
Puckdropper