I know where you are coming from, I have been in HO for thiry years and in the process of taking down a complete HO layout to build a new O narrow gauge layout.

Good luck in the new adventure.

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

I took a look through your photo bucket....and all I can say is WOW! You have or maybe now I should say had a terrific and very well done railroad I must say. That must take a lot of fortitude to start tearing apart. Well good luck to you as well...Do you think you will miss the sort of heavy coal hauling railroad you were doing as compared to the more whimsical style of O narrow guage?

Bob

Bob,

Welcome to the crew, I am interested in what you are doing even if it is standard gauge[:-angel]. I bet if you hang out here for a few weeks a small ON30 feeder line or mine delivering raw material works it's way into your plans.

Larry

Yankee, you will find many narrow-minded friends here! I experience my own 1:48 revolution about five years ago...after modeling in N and HO for 35 years. While it was a lot of fun, I am having a blast in large scale modeling. I look forward to seeing your progress.

Where are your previous layout photos?

Yankee,

It is great to see another standard gauge O Scaler. My journey to O Scale began about 4 years ago. After selling off almost 90% of my HO Scale brass collection, I reinvested in O Scale and a few other useful items. An MMI K-27 brought me kicking and screaming to On30, that led me to a great bunch of guys forming a modular layout. What I love about On30, while we detail the scenes it is about the flavor of narrow gauge, not the counting of rivits. I will be watching your progress, as I am still developing my layout ideas, a standard gauge O (5') and On30 dual gauge setting.

Enjoy the ride, Dave Silvernail.

Bob, glad to see you started this thread.

Even though the gauge is off a bit the scale is correct.

This group can appreciate good modeling in any scale or gauge.

Like Larry said, maybe we can influence you add an On30 interchange track, and maybe it will inspire some here to add a standard gauge interchange to their layouts.

Yankee Bob,

Welcome aboard. Although my layout is ON30, I still have three O scale locos and a bunch of cars from my childhood years.

I'll be looking forward to your postings and pictures.

The more I did research for my HO standard gauge layout the more I because interested in the small narrow gauge railroads that were feeder lines. I really liked how the narrow gauge coal railroads had much more difficult areas they had to go through and how non-standard their buildings and towns were. I am patterening my new narrow gauge line after the Mann's Creek railroad but using a fictional name in another canyon to allow me to make a few changes that I would like to see, and it allows me to use some different motive power (like a rod engine with a lead truck), so I don't think what I am doing will lean to far to the whimsical side, but I will exaggerate some features to enforce the difficult area the railroad ran through.

I have not torn down the HO layout yet because I want to finish my shay that I started so I don't lose track of the parts in the mess that will follow once the tear down process starts. I was also hoping that someone would step forward and take a section or two (or all) of the layout so it can live on, but that has not happened yet. My scheduled termination date for the HO layout is late July. I enjoyed building the HO layout but I am so excited to do something different and be building a layout again that I can't wait to start the tear out process.

Jeff,

Why don't you try selling the HO scale layout on ebay? That way, it would really live on and you would gain something by it. You have a few weeks to spare, so it can't hurt, can it?

Arthur

After selling off 95% of my HO equipment, I was left with a blank sheet of paper...the magic of a new horizon beckoned me to erase all the design errors and modeling blunders of previous times.

I must admit it was a refreshing experience even though rather hard to dismantle so many years of creativity in getting to it. Anyone who’s done the same thing knows this feeling well I'm sure.

I enjoy layout design and believe the careful efforts made during this design phase will pay dividends later on when the railroad becomes a working entity. My original space of 11' x 14" was somewhat confining for 1/4" scale. I know the narrow gauge patrons will shout at me about how perfect it would have been for an On30 short line, but I am heavily into conventional railroading of the transition era with its 40 and 50 foot cars and as such nothing could have made me sidestep this desire.

I was determined to make this limited space work by modeling a small branch of the Pennsylvania RR rather than trying to capture its 4 track main line and heavy coal hauling business. The Pennsy had operations out on the Delmarva Peninsula in Delaware and Maryland and I found the idea of its Chesapeake Bay proximity to have much appeal. I envisioned some car float activity for interchange and a water level route which was a complete and welcome departure from the mountainous scenery I had done in HO.

So with my basic concept established. I prepared a scale drawing using 1/8" = 1 actual inch...therefore 1 1/2 inches equals one actual foot...I find this large scale to benefit my ability to properly arrange and actually fit things into place instead of cheating the various alignments only to discover many misfits later on. Since I was entering a new realm…O scale...I felt it was even more important to get the fit well defined. I discovered that knowing HO clearances doesn’t prepare one for the major bump up of space needs that O scale demands.

Several rather large pieces of suitable drafting paper were worn to a pulp with many ideas and erasures...I had some basic operational needs for the railroad and also had the previously mentioned prototype location which aided me in my design work. Recently some alterations to our basement have increased the size of my railroad room to 11' x 24"...very much better now! I was able to expand my original drawing with some nice enhancements to the intended operations I plan. If I could figure a way to show what is drawn on such a large sheet of paper I would...its 17" x 36"...any reasonable ideas welcomed.

For the picture aficionados here is a what the very first section of this layout began as…note some old backdrop painting which still had to be covered up. At that time I still had several models of both O scale and HO being used for comparison as an aid to the design sketching process. A humble beginning at best. Back again soon…questions welcome.

Bob

I could, I don't know how I would ship it so it would have to be local pickup only. First I have to make sure I can get it out of the basement in a way that it could be set up again.

Bob-

I appreciate your thoughtful approach to the new layout and scale change. I would recommend ordering a copy of:

http://www.oscalemag.com/gmos.html

O Scale Trains Guide to Modern O Scale. It is a very practical reference written for the experienced modeler who does not have much experience with O scale.

Good luck, and keep us posted on progress

Mark Chase

Richmond VA

I just finally converted my layout to On30 with a bit of O gauge track on it, although I have to rework it.

I built it to be an HO layout with a double-track mainline, but discovered I was trying to do too much with too little space, and it stagnated after I built it enough for one loop around and ran some trains on it. That in itself was a compromise when I found running the main around a peninsula on it wouldn't work and bypassed it for the loop. Meanwhile all along I'm picking up On30 stuff here and there, then vintage scale O that I ran across, and even a DCC control a guy was selling stupid cheap.

I collect some real railroadiana stuff, too, and in some old files I discovered part of a branch of the one railroad might fit well in my existing space. I got out some other maps, looked at where it went, and gave myself a number of ideas as various track arrangements would fit in the space I had better than a mainline did. Discovering the Catskill Mountain Railway and other eastern narrow gauge helped, also.

Finally, when I saw the Bachmann 2-6-6-2 I decided I wanted one of those, so I got off my butt, and in the last few days I completely redid all the track with the idea of one final compromise - the layout track arrangement will follow various scenes on this branch, with On30 clearances and 22' min radius, but: the buildings and such will be done so that if I want to get my HO trains back out and run them, all I have to do is put the O scale things away and put HO buildings down in their place, HO cars in the yard, and go. The only real problem then is I'll have to swap transformers and run one train at a time, since like 99% of my HO locos are analog.

Of course, this still presents some problems - I need to raise the subroadbed on about half the layout. It was designed for trains that would have two or three powered HO locomotives pulling them, so I didn't worry about some of the grades being rather steep, especially when the center peninsula became a branch line. With the On30, it became a main line again and got connected to what had been the leads into staging. The result is twofold: one On30 loco can only pull 3-4 cars up the grades (Particularly the newer ones have more rolling resistance), and there are a few humps and bumps that cause the long Forney to come uncoupled from anything behind it. Raising the roadbed will let me use some pieces to fix several of the dips and humps, and lessen the grade so hopefully the little 4-4-0 can at least pull two passenger cars at a time. I'd be happy if they can at least go in one direction, since the return loop connection isn't really supposed to be there. Even that connection was an accident when I did the second compromise to lower the peninsula track and found where the branch to end was only about an inch difference in height from the staging lead a few inches away.

And of course it's all done in Atlas code 100 track - just because I have piles of it (I have more #4 and Snap-Switches than I will use in a lifetime, for the On30 I tried to use #6s as much as possible) and I can use cinders to pretty well bury the ties. The line I'm modeling, by the end, was often nearly invisible from the grass growing over the tracks, so if I leave a trail of cinders with the ties buried it should be fairly accurate. I might even run the "grass" right up to the outside of the rails in places.

Real cinders, incedentally, I found some next to the now CSX ROW and discovered they could be sifted out and glued down for a cost of only the gas to go where they were and scoop up a couple gallons of them. Another accident from when I used to railfan frequently, saw them and thought "gee, those are about the same size as HO ballast is...." -

Thanks Mark, I had seen this book, and checked through it since a friend had a copy. I've really cut my teeth in O scale in two ways...first and most beneficially with a very old gentleman who had been in O scale since the forties if you can imagine that...he was my mentor for several years even though I was still in HO at that time. I have also managed to learn a lot in the past 5 years of building this current railroad...what your reading and seeing in my diatribe on the subject is just the tip of the proverbial iceburg really...since I'm well along. I just rather take those interested through the process as I experienced it, instead of jumping in the deep end right from the start...probably boring to most but since some may find my input of worth I will continue.

Now let me just compliment you on your endeavors...I visited your website and digested what your doing. You are a very accomplished model railroader in your own right. Excellent workmanship and I know I will revisit until I've read it all...your share a lot of great stuff..thanks for that and your suggested reading for me.

Bob