Hi guys.
My name is Riekus and I live in Benoni South Africa. I used to model mainly HO scale and European. So I was a bit of a Marklin fanatic. I guess I still am. About three years ago I started sniffing at Gauge 1. It is expensive stuff, so I am going relatively slowly hehehehe. Plan is to build a 20m by 11m layout. I am in the process of scratchbuilding buildings and stuff. In the meantime I am busy fiddling with decoders and smokers and what not. Friday last week I purchased my first live steam locomotive. A SAR class23 in 3.5". Fetching it tomorrow. I am so excited. It is a big machine. 2.2m long and wet, weighs in at 300kg.
I guess I will figure out how to post pics and keep you fellows updated.
I also need to be honest. I joined for ulterior motives. But more of that later. I still need to decide whether I want to blow the whistle or not. As these things go, I joined and browsed through the topics and suddenly the day was halfway gone.
So, that's that. I hope to learn a lot here. Hehehehe, I have a funny feeling the big steamer is going to have a timing problem. So to the technical guys on here.....I might press on a button or two.
Cheers
Welcome to the forums.
Is your railroad indoors or out? By the size (if I am converting properly) it could be outdoors.
Not to drive you away, but if you are outside you might get better answers for some of your questions on the Garden Railways portion of the forums. To get there go to the top of the page to the small gray printing "trains.com sites" click on there and go to their forums. Most of the folks here are in HO or N, not sure how many have experience with live steam, though some may.
Pictures would be interesting, but for information on such large equipment, I think you will do better over with the garden folks.
Good luck,
Richard
Hi Riekus. Welcome to the group. I have a question regarding your layout. What scale does it come out to? (1/12...1/16...) As noted above, it must be outdoors. Almost sounds big enough to ride on. Dan
The OP posted scales of interest in the General Discussion (Trains.com) forum at the top of the forums list.
Rich
If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.
OK, so it's 3/8" to 12", or 1:32. I bet it is expensive! If you don't mind Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_gauge
Like S scale (1:64), there are a whole lot of accessories, like trucks, cars, machinery, etc, that could be used.
So just a little bigger than what we consider O scale, which is around 1:48. 1:8 scale is what the ride on stuff usually is:
http://titantrains.net/
Mike.
My You Tube
It is over 650 lb. so outdoor stuff. About 1/12 scale, we are talking big
The the 20 by 11m will be Gauge 1. 1:32 scale. The live steamer is narrow gauge modelled to our 3ft6in gauge, which makes her roughly 1:12. 1" to the foot.
I will build a structure outside so that the layout is under roof. For now, I am slowly gathering track and if there is one thing that is blatantly missing from the gauge 1 world, it is buildings.
I love the scale of the gauge 1 locos and the detail but they are in my opinion WAY overpriced. I run mainly KM1 and more often than not, you look at mid 3000's Euro for a loco. Makes your eyes water.
Buildings sometimes pop up on Ebay and now and then Marklin will release a building or two....but they are ridiculously expensive. I am building my own.
Accessories wise, even being about 9% smaller, I am using models from Miniart, Trumpeter and the like, all in 1/35 scale. For vehicles the slightly smaller scale works well with making the buildings and trees look bigger.
There is very little difference in scale with figurines. I build the Masterbox and Miniart ones and paint them. Cheaper than Preiser with more detail. Problem is, most of the 1/35 scale stuff is military based, so one needs to improvise.
I have a couple of bright yellow and funky red GAZ AAA's running around hehehehe.
I love the larger scales. The live steamer is nowhere near the 1/32 stuff when it comes to outright detail, make no mistake, but there is something sexy about making a fire to get things going. We have a club over here where there is ample track to run the live steamers. 3.5", 5" and 7.25". I don't know if it is appropriate here, not that it will matter because I am thousand of miles away, but I have a Model Railroad shop here in Benoni. So the plan is to manufacture a stand with rollers on it and steam her up every now and then mainly as an attraction for customers. You now....I am not a salesman hehehehe, my roots were farming.....like most of us here..... so I just plant seeds....