new to the dio sceen.

Well I dont know too much about cars in general but I would like to say welcome to Finescale online.

You know, fatman, what you speak of sounds more like one of those RailRoading town dio's, in HO scale. There exist MANY sources for obtaining practically any type realism you'd care to include.

I've stood and looked through the selection of HO scale dio material at Hobby Lobby, and pondered the possibilities of building a dio of a section of a Civil War battlefield, maybe about 2 scale acres of real estate (I must do the figures in 1/72nd scale, as in the old MPC Civil War figures kit), with a forked creek running across it, a few buildings ruins (as if on the edge of a town), trees, weeds, rail fence, etc etc...

One could incorporate and endless number of specific scenes in something like that, the same as you could with your town dio (including electronics). If you built it on a plywood base (you could use Styrofoam to make ground contours), when it's done, get some Plexiglass sections cut (down at Lowe's), some rubber cement, and make a pretty decent protective case that would be attached to the base by "O" ringed screws.

Good luck and keep us posted.

Take care,
Frank

i will look into the books and thats a very good thought on starting small after seeing some of the dios posted i think that will be the best way to go i will do my best to post pic as soon as i start
---thanks for the help----
Fatman

Since most cars are 1/24, you're talking one huge mungo jerry diorama, especially since you'll be scratchbuilding all the buildings.
My advice would be to start small, see how that goes and increase in scale. It's like the sport of running. You don't attempt a marathon the first you try to run, you build up to it. Take a single car, design a setting for it. try that out, post some pics. Move forward from that.

Get this book ( How to Build Dioramas ) by Shepard Paine. Its a pretty good start. It covers mostly military stuff but will still be usefull. I got mine off Overstock .com at a reasonable price. There are probably more books and souces out there as well. Plus there are plenty of people here who can help.