3/4" SCALE, LIVE STEAM

[TRAINBUILDER]

It was brought to my attention that I did not correctly post the scale that I am going to be working with, sorry!  Let me try again...As I stated in my last post, I am new to the hobby of Garden Railroading.  I have worked with trains since I was about 12 (in 1972), mostly HO and N scale.  I went to the Texas State Fair a few years back and saw a garden railroad there and went home and got rid of all my HO and N scale stuff.  From that time on I have been ate up with Garden Railroading.

I want to work with 3/4" scale.  In fact I am building an A3 Switcher.  I will be making my own rolling stock.  The original question I had was...Does anyone do garden layouts in this scale (without ridding the trains)?  I am learning so if anyone out there has information that will help me please let me know.

Lyn Arnold

[cabbage]

Well I am about as close as you can get -I work in Gauge 3 (2 1/2 inch gauge), with 13.5mm scale or 16mm scale. Your scale and gauge combination is normally referred to in my part of the world as 3/4 inch on 3 1/2 inch gauge track. There are several model engineering clubs that have track for this scale, although most of them do seem to like pulling their drivers around -I have seen "scenic" 3 1/2 inch gauge locos and rolling stock. Having consulted my "bible" on Model Railways -you are looking at 10 to 16 feet RADIUS curves.

I am not actually familar with the works of the Japanese author -all my books are mainly pre WW2 and LBSC or Henry Greenly.

There is no real problem building rolling stock -carriages or wagons. All of my creations are scratch built and I have nor secrets in their construction.

I am not aware of any commercial sources of track in the US -but I would imagine there are more than a few of them!!! Your main problem (like me) might be that you decide to hand lay all your track.

Have a look at the home page -especially "Kitchen Sink Engineering".

Hope this helps!!!

regards

ralph

[cabbage]

Thank you for the e-mail!

Model live steam locomotives have been built in the smaller scales ("N" being the smallest I have personally seen -I do know of a few "Z" ones though). My 8 year old son would like his father to buy him a Hornby OO scale (4mm=1 foot) live steam loco for his 9th birthday... I do have drawings for two 16mm scale live steam locos which would run on 32mm gauge track which are public domain -they are "DACRE" and "Edward Thomas". The most famous locomotive design to run at your scale and gauge combination is of course the LBSC design "Tich".

I started out in my first garden witha 16mm scale loco running on small loop of 32mm track, a very English scale and gauge combination normally called SM32. Now I have two running Gauge 3 locos and sixteen SM32 locos.

Run the scale and gauge combination that you feel most happiest with -because that is the correct one!!!

regards

ralph

[TRAINBUILDER]

Thank you Ralph!