Narrow vs Standard gauge

Greg Elems Aug 26, 2003

  1. Greg Elems

    Greg Elems Staff Member

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    Don brought up a good idea. Modeling narrow gauge and or standard gauge. Model a modern day White Pass and Yukon railroad or D&S with steam running and current settings. Another narrow gauge that fits HO track is Sn42. The New Foundland railroad was that gauge and ran up till the late 80’s IIRC. New Zealand railways are 42’’ gauge and runs GE boats and EMD export units. Imagine a layout that had buildings that were modular and the track and scenery were fixed with HO gauge track. One year you have O scale buildings and run On30. The next year you get out your S building and run Sn42. Get tired of that and put the O gauge buildings back. In the mean time the kids sneak down and run their HO trains on your layout because it has scenery and the building ratio doesn’t bother them.

    Greg
     
  2. BoxcabE50

    BoxcabE50 HOn30 & N Scales Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    Just wondering about the ties if using HO for an S narrow gauge. Would HO look, for a lack of better words, too small? Would spacing and their length appear obviously incorrect? I Know that HOn30 often uses N track. But there it's getting rather small for the eyes to perceive what might seem somewhat out of scale?

    :D

    Boxcab E50
     
  3. Greg Elems

    Greg Elems Staff Member

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    There are two makers of On30 track. Peco and Micro Engineering. ME has smaller ties, almost too small IMHO for On30. Peco ties are a touch too big, even for On3. Anyway, I'd have used Atlas flex with about 1/3 of the ties removed and buried it to look like NG track in the dirt. Fortunatly, I woke up and decided to concintrate on S. :D :D

    Greg
     
  4. texasdon

    texasdon E-Mail Bounces

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    I must confess that narrow gauge is tempting, but I am probably more interested in a nice diesel switcher pushing tank cars into a chemical plant. I know that does not excite all model railroaders, but that is the beauty of this hobby. We can all do our own thing and enjoy each others' work anyway. Just sent off for the Plastruct catalog. It looks like they still make stuff for building industrial design models, so I am thinking I will include a nice chemical unit, open air like here in Texas, in my layout. I build the real chemical plants for a living, so I should be able to create a credible represenation. There are some nice looking diesel switchers and tank cars in S scale.

    I have thought about building a tourist railroad. The idea came to me while riding the Strasbourg RR outside of Lancaster, PA. With a reasonable space you could model the whole railroad and all its operations with little selective compression required. You need a yard and station at one end and a passing track at the other end with a passing track in the middle for the two trains normally running to pass each other. If you want to show off other stuff, the Strasbourg is the outside world connection for the PA RR museum. I think I will go with industrial switching, but it is an idea.

    By the way, is there a website for the scale code 100 track from Shinohara or the other manufacturers?
     

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