Hi folks. I've not posted in a while, as i have been largely distracted by the bucolic tank locomotives and branchlines of Great Western country in the UK, but I've not abandoned my affinity for all things large, loud, American, and decidedly coal-burning. In fact, I have an idea of sorts... A poster on a well known British railway modeling forum has constructed several cameo layouts by using Ikea "Lack" shelves or tabletops as baseboards. They come in convenient sizes, such as 120 x 40 cm (just about 4 feet by 16 inches) and in this space he has built some lovely layouts. An "off scene" auxiliary board, known as a "fiddle yard", represents the rest of the world. This got me thinking. 120 cm x 40 cm, or 4 feet by 16 inches, would be just about right for a dockside with an ironboat, a quartet of Hullets, and 3 tracks for NYC 0-8-0s to crawl around on in N scale, wouldn't it...? Gah, N scale. WHY do you have to be so wonderfully sized?!?
Sounds like a great start for an Inglenook layout. http://www.carendt.com/micro-layout-design-gallery/inglenook-designs/ http://www.amherstrail.org/ABEL/Downloads/Shelf-Layouts.pdf
Well, the largest part of the problem is the 0-8-0s themselves. The Life-Like ones are wonderful but long out of production and now command quite a premium when they do crop up on the bay, and as the molds seem to have been "lost", Atlas is very unlikely to re-run them. The only other game in town for an 0-8-0 is the old 70s era Atlas / Rivarossi / Lima (whoever made them) things that are... not great. NYC had armies of these things, mostly USRA ones or very close copies, so the LL models would work perfectly.
