I was out shopping for a magazine about european prototypes and bought this french magazine that looked interesting. It turned out to be the french equivalent to narrowgauge and shortline gazzette. It comes with an insert that has all the articles translated to english. I really liked the look of some of their articles. It's just a very different style of model railroading than what we do here. It seems that HO meter gauge is popular there. I think it comes out to be about Ho2.5 gauge. Caboose Hobbies carries it and it's worth checking out atleast one issue.
You wonder how many different track types they use over there. We're pretty lucky with only 2 foot , 2.5 foot (compromise gauge for modellers), and 3 foot in the narrow gauages. I suspect there were many different oddball gauges over in europe and russia.
The most common model narrow gauge in OO model railways here in the UK is OO9. (4mm scale on N scale track spacing). In places like Switzerland, the biggest by far is HOm. (HO metre gauge).
G'day all, As far as NG modelling goes, the situation in Europe is quite straigthforward, IMHO : 12mm (1/2") spaced track for HOm (metric), goes also with TT standard gauge (1/120) 9mm (1/3") spaced track for HOe, representing both actual 60cm (2ft) and 76cm (21/2ft) gauges There is currently a relative newcommer in NG metric modelling, wich use regular HO gauge (16.5mm) representing almost perfectly 1 meter gauge in 1/64 scale S scale is decade old famed in North America, but was seldom seen in Europe, though it is certainly a very good compromise between O and HO scale, regarding NG modelling. Hope I help clearing those muddy waters a bit marc
Marc- Welcome aboard! You are right, when noting the potential of the "S" size trains. In fact, Sn2 modeling has gained some popularity here in the last few years. Boxcab E50
Boxcar, A guy here in France is particularly promoting "Sm" (metric gauge in 1/64) He has developped a very interesting method to build cheap models (rolling stock, structures) : A "layer after layer" resin mfg process from CAd design, which yield unbelievable detailled results Ciryl Ducrocq BTW, this guy is also a aircraft hobby maker, so he seems quite imaginative Cheers, marc
S scale on 16.5 mm gauge track is also commonly used to model 1067mm (3' 6") gauge systems. It is particularly popular in New Zealand.
