How hard is it really to go HOn3?


SpaceMouse

SpaceMouse

Fun Lover
Okay, I found Early Rails group on Yahoo. I haven't really dived into conversation with them but it seems they are a good resource for rolling stock. But when I look for engines I find that everything is geared toward Colorado and I want to do something in the redwoods.

I'm also looking to do something in the 1890-1910 range. Maybe in the Santa Cruz area, maybe in the Sierras. I've looked at several railroads and am leaning toward Santa Cruz right now.

The engines I have found that are relative to era are 2-8-0's by MDC in kits. I know the would need to be re-geared. I would want to put Tsunamis in them as well.

But where do I go from there? What skills will I need? I'd consider bashing HO bodies on HOn3 chassis but I've never even see one for sale.
 
Chip,
go with HOn30 that way you have all those good runing N scale mech's to work with.

Or you could go with TT track and mech's if you could find them as the TT track gauge is something like 2/3rd's of an inch narrower than HOn3 track.

I just went with HOn30 and tell people their nitpic scales must be mis-calibrated.:D
 
Chip;

For engines you'll pretty much have to go with brass if you don't want Colorado NG. The MDC kits are sometimes very hard to find, but even they are based on Colorado NG.

There are several companies that offer rolling stock.

Funaro & Camerlengo have a few, and I know that there are several others out there, Railine I think, being another.

There are several guys in our club that does HOn3. One even used to do HOn30, modeling Maine 2 footers with N scale mech's. I can ask them about loco suppliers if you would like.
 
I've been searching on the net for the last couple hours and I have come up with a 4-4-0, a 2-6-0 and a Climax A in brass in the $175-275 range at Caboose Hobbies. This sounds too reasonable. I'm concerned they won't run well.
 
SpaceMouse said:
I've been searching on the net for the last couple hours and I have come up with a 4-4-0, a 2-6-0 and a Climax A in brass in the $175-275 range at Caboose Hobbies. This sounds too reasonable. I'm concerned they won't run well.
Click to expand...

The 4-4-0 and 2-6-0's sound like they were/are part of NWSL's subsidiary, Far East Distributors. These were actually not bad locos for the time, 1970's, but to offset the price these locos came with minimal detail. This was a selling point, as you could buy whatever detail and apply it to the loco, making it what you wanted. Due to their size, and their manufacturer, sometimes they didn't run as well as their more expensive counterparts. This seemed to be due to a lack of weight more than anything else, and there wasn't much room for adding weight.

The A may be a Westside model. I had a class A climax from them that had so much gearing in it that literally was too loud. The motor screamed, the gears screamed. It ran fairly well at realistic speeds, but was too loud!
I sold it and my other HOn3 loco, a Westside C-18 shortly thereafter. I decided not to have any NG at all.

Made my wife mad.:eek: She said they were cute!:p:rolleyes: As soon as she said that, I knew I did the right thing!:D
 
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Labelle sells HOn3 cars. Kadee makes some 1930's era Colorado narrow gauge cars. NG&SL Gazette will have adds for other HOn3 craftsman kits.

Engines will be pretty much brass.

As to your question of difficulty:
You are going from standard to narrow gauge, so that eliminates a whole bunch of available equipment.
You are going away from Colorado to the pacific Coast, so you are going away from the most common NG area.
You are going back to the 1890's, so you are going away from the most common era.

Basically you have chosen a very, very, very small niche.

If you like making your own equipment and modifying/backdating commercial offerings, then its its only moderately difficult. If you are expecting ready to run equipment, it will be darn near impossible.

Dave H.
 
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Thanks Dave.

I just reread your post from a month ago and I still aprreciate it. I have been hanging out with the Early Rails guys and the HOn3 guys on Yahoo and I am slightly encouraged (but not quite) MMI is coming out with a 4-4-0 later this year that will have a couple different California configs. That doesn't make a fleet, but the HOn3 crowd seems to think that HOn3 is gaining momentum.

Not that is enough to sway me....but there is a moth to flame attraction going on.
 
Things to consider. 1890's standard gauge is not that much different in size than 1930's narrow gauge. All the buildings and accessories (people, wagons, details) would be the same for the same era. 1890's standard gauge car construction would be the same as narrow gauge construction. Minimum radius would not be that much different.

The only real difference is the availability of equipment and the variety of equipment. The narrow gauge would have much, much less variety of car types and road names. The other difference is flexibility of eras. If you go narrow gauge, you are narrow gauge. If you go standard gauge and want to operate 1940 SP or 1950 WP or your own shortline or 2009 BNSF, just swap out cars and locomotives (and select details).

Not that any of that is bad, just to quote the renown philosopher, Harry Callahan, "A man's got to know his limitations."

Dave H.
 
Dave,

I'm looking now at the Alameda Branch of the SP (The South Pacific Coast RR and the Santa Cruz RR.) At least the section between Watsonville and the Yard at Santa Cruz will be standard.

The South Pacific went standard in 1908 so I have a cop-out. But if I go earlier, I can do both gauges with a dual yard in Santa Cruz.
 
Chip, I'd suggest you at least give it a try. I did the very same thing a few months ago and decided mainly thanks to the astronomical cost of everything HOn3 related that I personally could obtain from eBay and my LHS not to get seriously into HOn3. If money's not a huge issue and $7.00 for 3 feet of flex track and $30 for switches doesn't make any difference to you, I highly reccomend it.

The detail of HOn3 offerings, even those FED 4-6-0 and 4-4-0's is quite nice. If you're not afraid of some pretty intense scratchbuilding and kitbashing, dealing with nearly invisible fiddly detial parts (this from a person with better than 20/20 eyesight) and always dealing with an uphill battle to make your trains run smoothly and pull well I actually think it's quite a nice scale to work in.

You won't be able to get away with some of the wilder aspects that make On30 so appealing like little 0-4-0 porters, sharp curves or wide range of cheap merchandise to play with. You'll pretty much have to build an HOn3 layout with the same 18-20" minimum radii and #4 switches you'd end up using for regular HO.

A structural engineer of the late 1890's suggested that there is no economy in narrow gauge because to run reliably you had to essentially build your NG road to standard gauge specs.

The South Pacific Coast is an ideal railroad to model, check out the Pelican Bay Railway & Navigation Company, an Sn3 version almost entirely based in the SPC reality. Of course you probably know that the great Boone Morrison modeled HOn3 for almost 30 years before just recently converting to On3. There's countless (over 150) articles by him in Narrow Gauge & Short Line Gazette chronicling the construction of his North Pacific Coast, the sister road to the SPC.

I hope this helps, e-mail me about your HOn3 ideas, it sounds quite interesting!
 
Miles,

$7 a stick for track! Sounds like a case for hand-laying. Turnouts won't be an issue so much as I am a Fast Tracks fan.

I've been talking with Boone a little about the NPC and if I don't get exactly what I want from the SPC, I know I have a good resource. I also know that Charlie Comstock, who I interviewed a while back, knows the SPC very well and I know he would love to talk about it, but I haven't called him yet.

Small detail stuff doesn't scare me too much, although soldering is a skill I haven't mastered, and it makes me nervous since HOn3 seems to be the domain of brass. I've never tried soldering brass and don't have a clue if I could pull it off.

At any rate, if I do go narrow gauge, I guess it would take a while to build up a fleet significant enough to fun 4-6 person ops sessions.
 
Chip,

At least the $7 stick of track is micro-engineering, but still seven dollars...yikes.

I think it would take a long time to build a suitable roser of equipment for 4-6 operators, many HOn3 modelers barely have enough for 2 operators after many years of work, due to almost every passenger car being a craftsman-level kit.

However Micro-Trains new HOn3 offerings are slowly changing this, but ONLY if you're willing to stomach $17-$90 freight cars. ($17 being the MTL flatcars and the $90 being a blackstone center coupla caboose with full underbody and interior.) Their average car, as you probably know runs about $30.

The Locodoc (Roundbell Co.) has an incredibly nice repowering kit for the FED 4-4-0's check it out via google.
 
Handlaying track is not so tough. The obvious question to my mind is why not go On30? This way you can use all that great Spectrum stuff, the Shays, the Porters, the Heislers and very affordable rolling stock. The real estate requirements aren't much different from HO scale, and you don't have to mess with brass unless you want to. If you want to scratchbuild or kuitbash locos you can use HO mechanisms.

Soldering brass isn't tough either, though if you are going to work on brass locomotives you'll need resistance gear, at about $400-500.00 for a good setup. Just remember the same thing every plumber knows. The surfaces must be CLEAN!
 
As I see things, the most difficult aspect is finding locomotives. Walthers has a nice selection of rolling stock (micro trains, rail stuff and blackstone models) and micro engineering offers track and turnouts for those like me who don't want to do handlaying all supporting a certain level of ready to run albeit at an obscene amount of money.

I would never dream of trying to build a large narrow guage line offering operation for 4-6 people, the cost is just too much. But a small 2'x10' layout with operation for 1 person is very doable in my opinion.

I can truely appreciate your comment about the moth to flame attraction, there is definitely something about narrow guage. I've been a modern diesel era Santa Fe fan for so long I never bothered to look elsewhere but the steamers and rolling stock of narrow gauge are so beautiful, it has an old world charm to it.
 
Why not 55n3? 5.5mm/ft on HO track, giving a correct scale/gauge ratio.

narrowed_gon.jpg


Visit:

http://www.55n3.org/

Thank you if you visit
Harold
 
I tried building a small HOn3 logging line on my layout. It's pretty much a static diplay until I can trouble shoot the trackwork and wiring and right now I'm concentrating on the standard guage .
It's running an MDC 2-8-0 and shay. I built the 2-8-0 out of a whole bunch of parts that I got off a fellow modeller. I have enough parts left over from building the 2-8-0 to build a second one (except motor)But I probably won't and just see if anyone wants to buy it off me and build their own.
2008_03150015.png
 
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