What to start and with what?

OTR,
do you operate locos with RC?

seems *interesting* if you do not.

No. My son has a few R/C engines but even those don’t get used very often. I have considered a Mr Motorman but they’re out of stock at all the retailers I buy from and honestly, their operation is a bit clunky anyway. The track layouts I build aren’t especially complicated, being mostly large loops or long point to point runs, so R/C isn’t really necessary. I keep in mind that these are toy trains bought mostly for the amusement of my kids and I’m comfortable with those limitations.

On a bit of a tangent, my son and I repaired our track today so that he could run his new TM2 Lexi I gave him yesterday. (Poor kid is having a rough week; out of school with a chronic tonsil and sinus infection that’ll require a tonsillectomy in December. So yeah, I’ve been spoiling him a bit.) Lexi wasn’t operating well on the two sections of TM1 track I had put in, so we rebuilt those with TM2 track. He eventually had her running well and pulling about 10 empty gondolas but she was sticking, bogging down and even derailing at a wye and a couple of switch points, although the entire line is TM2 track. While I’m having a bit of trouble on that particular wye anyway, even with a couple of my Plarail C battery engines, I’ve noticed a general tendency for the TM2 engines to be finicky about the track and track conditions they run on. He eventually cut 4 cars off the train but Lexi was still having some problems.