Welcome, I'm sort of the opposite to yourself, I was messing around with Mamod and simple occilator engines, also have an interest in 32mm and 5" gauge locos, so I already have an idea of what i wanted to make. I bought a lathe from e-bay, a myford that came with a lot of tooling. The lathe needs some work, but should be ok for my needs. Plus it only set me back £300, and it was collected from near Bristol too. My point is you don't need to spend a fortune on tools, but it does need to be able to build what your wanting to build