Is Home Automation the new model railroad? I have a strong feeling that controlling small electronic devices goes deep down in the soul of each man (and maybe also women). The model railroad has until now been an very secure way to burn the household finances and whatever spare time you might have on a hobby. The challenge with the model railroad hobby seems to be that it takes up rather big space if your hobby grows. Different scales has been introduced to try to solve this but for every down sizing of the scale you have also lost some capabilities. To mention a few. You can no longer use a automatic couple, control your crane, unload your coal wagons or drive your model cars and busses from remote. So going from the N-scale to O- or Z-scale gives you less fun for less space. Other issue is that the old investment needs to be painstakingly converted to support the new digital formats and not all formats can work with each other (honestly not all HA system can handle this either).
I'm of course writing this mostly because I don't any longer, used to as a kid, have any model railroad but I had a urge and some plans at some point in getting one, though that was before Vera from mios.com come into my life 
A home automation system gives you a way of controlling a wide range of things, manually, over internet, by schedule or by external triggers like place, weather, presence etc. It involves the whole family. Aware of it or not when their coffee is ready in the morning, flowers watered, warm house and a lower than ever energy bill, saving money for better things...
It lowers the energy consumption and saves the planet or at least gives you the luxury of a letting the plumber in by un-locking the front door from your office and see what he is doing while being there.
Space. A home automation system takes up very little space and you don't need to convert a whole room for it. I have seen very complex system built up completely hidden in a dorm room, devices can be hidden in your bed or mail box. The only one that knows they are there are you (so please remember to inform if that’s by law where you are).
A railroad in a house might not raise the selling price while reports from USA show a plus twenty percent higher sales price for homes with a smart house system installed.
To move your railroad to a new place is a difficult operation even though module based system provides a great mobility. Moving with a HA system is unfortunately not that easy either, but if you like you can take at least most of it with you again and if it’s based on e.g z-wave protocol then it’s wireless and mostly very easy to move.
Going all in, nothing says that you can’t control your MR with HA 
