Foggy Bottom Railroad 7/8n2: Coach Interior Paneling

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Coach Interior Paneling

I had today off and ended up falling asleep in the afternoon for a couple of hours. It seems that ended up tweaking out my "tired" schedule because it's 2AM and I'm posting pictures on the blog!

Anyways, with the coach it's starting to feel that for the amount of time I'm putting into it, it sure doesn't look like it.

These next couple of shots don't look at impressive, but it's what I've been working on...

The "window glass" has been mounted on one side
I've started to cut and prep the interior paneling
In the shots below, none of the paneling is glued in place (but the "window glass" is)
You can also see one of the roof rafters is also in place

There's this real ugly orangy-brown line of glue where the "window glass" is glued down. That will, of course, be covered up by paneling eventually.

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What is 7/8n2?

A way in which trains are classified is the width between the rails. It's known as the 'gauge'. In the United States, most trains people think of when they think of trains are Standard Gauge railroads. In standard gauge, the width between the rails is 4 ft 8.5 in.

Other gauges exist. In particular, anything skinnier than standard gauge is classified as "Narrow Gauge". Narrow gauge typically ranges from about 18" up to 36".

7/8n2 is a scale that is focused on 2 foot gauge; hence the "n2" part at the end. It stands for "narrow, 2 foot". 2 foot gauge railways (that is, 24 inches between the rails) were used throughout the world, but more notably in european countries and south africa. Narrow gauge trains were smaller in size. They hauled less cargo, but their advantage was they were cheaper to build and could negotiate tighter turns than standard gauge.

Most of the 2ft gauge railways there were in existence have gone, but some are still maintained. The most notable 2ft gauge in the US was found in Maine, and is the only 2ft gauge railway to haul general freight. Most other 2ft railways were typically focused on industrial use, for example, hauling peat or slate from a mine to a processing facility.

So if "n2" means narrow 2 foot, what's the 7/8? It means the scale is 7/8 of an inch represents 1 foot in real life. It's a ratio of 1:13.7. 7/8n2 is a fairly large scale. A 2 foot gauge boxcar that in real life was 10 feet long and 6 feet tall would be 8.75 inches long and 5.25 inches tall if modeled in real life.

If that was all too complex, think of it this way: 7/8n2 is a large scale to model small trains.