Foggy Bottom Railroad 7/8n2

Monday, July 13, 2009

Layout Draft #2

Some thoughts for a better layout. I really need to improve my understanding of 19th century mining in order to better design and layout the buildings required. This certainly won't be a final.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Primered and flat black. Actually, I had done a more fancy paint job, but it turned out to be a really ugly glossy cherry red (like something you'd paint a car) instead of something you'd paint a train. I ended up re-primer'ing it and starting over.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Britomart Update

I finished the construction of my first On18 Britomart scratch build. It's unpainted at the moment, but here we go....

The engine in action:

The completed build:

Time for painting!

On18 Steamer

I decided to take on a little project this evening: an On18 steamer. It's built on top of a Bachmann 2-6-2 Prairie, modified to 0-6-0. Thus far I've only got the basic chassis and cab completed.

Prototype:

Model:

compared here to the bachman 0-4-0 gas mechanical On30:

aaaaaaand here's my work bench which is getting more and more crazy messy:

it might look something like this when it's done:

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Styrene Railbus

This morning I began my scratch built railbus in styrene. I had previously made a prototype with paperboard (seen painted in rust). I'm now giving it a shot in styrene, hopefully making it the correct scale this time.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Completed On18 Flatcar

I finished painting and assembling the flatcar this morning.

Being both the first styrene model I've built, and the first one completely from scratch I learned a few things.

A truck that "swivels" shouldn't go on a car with a single truck. After studying the design of other cars I have I see this is the norm.
Figure out how the couplers are going to fit before building the entire thing. Oops.

Styrene Scratch Building

I finally got around to trying out scratch building with styrene. Ok ok, first attempt it's nothing fabulous (and it's unpainted at the moment). Here's my flatcar in On18: (and these are bad pictures too, but you can still sort of see the wood detail and nail heads)

Track

I also decided on the track for Foggy Bottom: Code 100, Peco ST-240/ST-241 #2 turnouts.

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.