Model Railroading: If you had it to do over..

O scale.

I wish I had started in it instead of OO, but when I bought my first house more than 30 years ago, I unpacked the Triang stuff I'd had as a teenager and packed away when I left home.

I made the same mistakes others do, getting my favourite engines. But a Castle with three or four carriages looks silly while a Dukedog or an 0-6-0 with the same short train looks right.

Eventually I went back in time to circa 1900 and then into O-scale but regretted those wasted years.

You can build an O scale layout in the sort of space people build typical OO layouts. A pre-grouping branch line terminus and fiddle yard with 4- or 6- wheeled carriages and small engines doesn't take up much space, you have more detail and as our eyesight gets worse with age, it is easier to couple and uncouple.

Suitable resin locomotive kits are available from ABS Zero Zephyr (ex- Eric Underhill) for GWR saddle tanks and the 517 (predecessor to the

14xx), also in brass from Scorpio. 4-and 6-wheel carriages from Slaters, IKB (I particularly like these), Blacksmith and others. Early goods brake van in resin from Meteor or brass from WEP, suitable goods wagons from a variety of sources including plastic from Peco and Cooper Craft not to mention Slaters private owner wagons, and brass from WEP and others.

On 12/9/2010 4:10 PM snipped-for-privacy@now.net spake thus:

Still HO. The most stuff available; it's sort of the canonical model railroad gauge. It still seems the most "right" to me.

However:

o If you have bad eyesight and can't handle those increasingly teensy-tiny parts and details? O

o If you have tons of room to fill with layout (and tons o'money)? O

o If you're young (i.e., have good eyesight and can handle teensy-tiny things), don't necessarily have much room but want to cram in as much sweeping landscape as possible? N

HO has the most products by a factor of about 10 over the best of the rest. O has a good range of toy trains and enough expensive stuff to break my budget.

Q1. what would you like to achieve? Q2. How much space do you have? Q3. What standard of modelling do you wish to achieve. Q4. How big is your budget?

A possibility is G gauge which is about twice the size of O gauge. Prices aren't too high at the cheap end and there's a large variety of stock.

There are some beautiful N and 2mm fine scale layouts where they have done a brilliant job of scenery.

Well known ones on the exhibition circuit include The Manchester club's Chee Tor layout and the Model Railway Club's Copenhagen Fields. There is also a large scenic N-gauge layout at Bewdley on the Severn Valley Railway in a Thompson full brake so it would be about 60 feet long.

The best layout I have seen in any scale is Pendon's Vale of the White Horse scene.

And in O-scale I was privileged to visit the late Colonel Hoare's famous Bromford and High Peak layout

On 12/9/2010 6:48 PM Greg Procter spake thus:

You forgot:

Q5. How good is your eyesight? How fumbly are your fingers?

I've been in HO since the early '50s and am still convinced that it offers to most bang for your modeling buck.

1.) There's *far* more stuff available in HO than in any other gauge. 2.) It's big enough to still see the detail and -in most cases- heavy enough to run well even on somewhat dirty track. 3.) It's small enough to get quite a bit of railroad into a limited space -which is a problem for most home layout builders. 4.) It's nowhere *near* as expensive as "O" gauge stuff, and not that much more expensive than "N" or "Z" gauge. 5.) If you're a joiner, HO model railroad clubs are generally more common and tend to have larger memberships than clubs that are dedicated to other gauges. This means that HO club layouts tend to be both larger and better financed than those of the, um, lesser gauges. };^P

~Pete

Twibil wrote in news:86c7aad6-795d-42cd-94c5- snipped-for-privacy@29g2000prb.googlegroups.com:

*snip*

If you have no space for a layout, N might be a good way to go as well. An N-trak module takes up only 2'x4', and can be connected together to form a huge layout several times a year.

Puckdropper

Well, I think only you can really answer those questions, but they need to be reformulated so that you know what you are really asking for. Try these versions:

A) What do I like about trains? Which of these aspects do I like enough to want to model them? B) Do I like watching trains, or do I want to play engineer/conductor/etc? C) How important is the setting (landscape, cityscape)to me? A lot, or just enough to provide a background for the trains? D) How important is building models? E) Is my emotional aim to remind myself of what trains were like when I was (much) younger, or do I just like trains - any trains? F) How much time and money am I willing to spend to build a layout?

Answers to these questions will make it pretty clear to you what _you_ want. If you're not quite sure, spend some time vsiisting other people's layouts or clubs. As your ideas crystallise, you will be better able to ask questions that other people can help you with, such as whether a particular brand or of locomotive is worth the money, or whether DCC is worth the learning curve, etc.

FWIW, I'm more interested in building small portable layouts now. Any scale will do. I'm about to cut up some 3-1/2" insulation foam to make a

31"x48" base for a On30 layout: a loop of track, a three or four short sidings, and enough buildings so you have to walk around the layout to see what's on the other side.

Wolf K.

In my experience, the size of detail doesn't change much between scales. Here in New Zealand the largest common scale is 9mm:1ft. The people who model in that scale add things like the hinge-pins in doorways and threaded bolts on the track joiners etc. The Z scalers tend to take their stock out of the box and do very nice (if somewhat broad) scenic detailing. Both groups probably speed much the same amount of time on their modelling.

Fair point - I was making it up as I went.

Thanks for the replies. I'm thinking HO or N at this point. Possibly a semi vertical mountain gold mining layout with a bunch of switch-backs going up the wall. 1800s steam. Any pointers and resources are appreciated.

Dave

MHO is that N gauge steam (1880s) is better suited to running round and round an oval that operating switchbacks. A modern good quality N gauge Bo'Bo' Dieasal could/would/should cope. Most HO locos should be good enough once you get out if the $10-25 price range. You probably won't find much of a range of HO 1880s, but there should be enough items to overstock the layout you're suggesting with a bit of searching. (Walthers catalogue is a good place to start) In my experience, as you go down in size/number of axles you need to go up in quality :-)

Greg.P.

You might consider Civil War railroading.

For the steep grades, swithcbacks, and rough track of a mining railroad, I'd say go with a Shay or two.

Real-life Shays were designed for exactly that sort of railroad, there are lots of different models of them available in HO, and the older (I.E. non-superheated) versions were common from the late 1800s on.

~Pete

For the steep grades, swithcbacks, and rough track of a mining railroad, I'd say go with a Shay or two.

Real-life Shays were designed for exactly that sort of railroad, there are lots of different models of them available in HO, and the older (I.E. non-superheated) versions were common from the late 1800s on.

~Pete

IIRC, there are now standard gauge shays available in N scale. Also Nn3.

Thanks again for your input. I'm thinking Shay (N) is the way to go. I found this link you folks might find interesting if you haven't seen it yet.

You might click around a bit, there's plenty of steam era modeling ideas.

Thanks,

Dave

No one has mentioned On30. It runs on HO standard gauge track, but is O scale. For the time period you are looking for, Bachmann makes some very nice equipment at reasonable prices. There is very little in HO that fits your time period that is not brass.

worth looking into.

Dave

worth looking into.

You can get some suitable cheap HO brass at the various train shows.

There are a generic 1800s 4-4-0 and 2-6-0 that were imported in large quantities by Ken Kidder and others in both HO and HOn3.

These had the motor in the tender connected to gears in the engine, and the connection needs to be replaced with neoprene tubing - model aircraft fuel tubing which is very flexible. It also helps to replace the original open framed motor with a small can.

The 4-4-0 has the problems that a lot of 4-4-0s have, ie it is constructed like an 0-4-0 with the front truck just going along for the ride so the engine has a large overhang and is unbalanced, but the

2-6-0 is much better.

These engines are a little crude by modern standards, being more than

40 years old, but they look nice when painted. You can add more detail if you want.