Most people, myself included, have ONE layout. One of the things I admire about you and your channel, besides the budget part, is the sheer number of layouts you produce. More power to your elbow. Cheers
The Kato system of raised track beds is phenomenal in n gauge and I would seriously recommend it for n gauge especially when turnouts are used. Never any electrical problem unlike the conventional peco way. The turnouts are however subtle with a 15 degree turn making them long for an inglenook layout..but together with the Kato controller and turnout controllers make a great hands free experience. British rolling stock is so expensive. Thats why I use German rolling stock which can be found a lot cheaper than the Graham Farish stuff on ebay and the quality is excellent by Fleischmann, Minitrix and Roco.
I've never had electrical issues with peco track. I do like Kato track but the points are simply to big for shunting layouts. I did use it for my last exhibition layout very successfully though
I have started using the Kato compact turnouts that are specifically made for the Pocket Line equipment. They come in pairs in the CV-2 track set with other track, controllers and cables or individually. They can replace a 124 mm straight or a 150mm radius curve. I combined it with a CV-1 circle of track to get a circle of track 24 inches by 13 inches with a two track yard. Cheers.
Brilliant video. I have truly got the Kato N bug thanks to this channel. I've made two excellent recent purchases from Japan: 1 Japanese C56 2-6-0 steam tender loco. Incredible detail, directional lights, beautiful connecting rods and valve gear and the usual impeccable Kato motor. £65. Also picked up a rake of four coaches for it with working switchable tail lights for £33. 2 the modern Swiss Glacier express - electric loco and two unusual-looking panoramic coaches for £44. Plus a further four coaches for £50 to make a full train. Delivery was £20. The value of Kato is quite incredible especially at current exchange rates - the yen is pretty weak.
Creativity always finds a way to emerge into something great. I enjoy how BMR has recently used the Inglenook puzzle to form the basis of layouts. A lot seems to happen with just two points. Insert the Inglenook into a loop (as you have done) and employing 40’ wagons will allow for maximum train running and operations. I’ve stayed with 40’ wagons on my USA layouts and it’s amazing how being able to fit that “one last” wagons adds to the shunting possibilities. 😊
You can always find bargains at shows and get nice pre-owned wagons or loco's for small prices(found a jinty for 3 pound great runner too),I really like your view on modelling as it isn't rivet counting and gives a fresh look at the hobby
As my first entry into N-Gauge and model railways in general, I was lucky to pick up a vintage Graham Farish Bulleid 4-6-2 steam loco off eBay for just £40, which was a surprisingly good runner (apart from the loose tender which detaches if I run it too fast) for that money. Got a rake of 5 Lima Mk1 coaches (2 in SR Green and 3 in LMS Maroon) to go with it, also for £40 or about £8 per carriage.
The pre-grouping era was fascinating, not least in terms of its operational potential. Passenger train arrives, either the loco has to run-round or a replacement loco needs to be added, in some cases the rake was pulled out of the 'arrivals' platform and pushed into the 'departures' platform, and of course there might be a horse box or parcels van attached. Goods traffic was very varied, lots of shunting even at a smaller station, lots to think about, lots to do. Cut to the present era . . . Well there are emu's and dmu's running back and forth but freight consists almost exclusively of block trains, so watching trains go by is about it. My own interest in modern railways pretty much died with the end of Speedlink, as did the interest of my god son. Reliability is crucial, lack of it saw my own interest wane and generally deflated the people I tried to help build their own layouts. The Kato pocket line approach looks promising, especially if people such as yourselves produce suitable bodies for the locos. The Peco 15' chassis can be extended (you have to cut it diagonally), you could offer an insert for the chassis plus a generic 4-wheeler coach body similar to the late lamented Farish examples. Hornby loudly proclaim that they 'do not make toys', which is a little bit silly as the museum model market is somewhat niche. Toys generally are very hard to find these days, there is a lot of 'merchandising' to put in the attic alongside the rare beany baby and the limited edition pet rock in the hope it'll give you a boost when you retire, but toys are rather more sophisticated. So, keep up the good work, when a layout works it can be an absorbing hobby and the likes of Buckingham Great Central and the glorious Madder Valley Railway show what can be achieved with (largely) recycled household waste (still better than the commercial offerings).
Great video as always, I love your opinions and agree there Should be some cheaper options for UK outline available. I wish there were UK loco kits available
For value for UK N gauge modelling, cannot really beat for my money the dapol twin coach packs for GWR. c£33 for 2 coaches with pretty solid detailing that run smooth. They work best on 2nd radius but can take first if the coupling on your loco has a bit of play on it. My dapol autocoah has some trouble uncoupling on slopes and 1st radius which is a shame but otherwise for £15-20 it's ideal to run on a small end to end layout. Don't need a huge rake or passing loops, just a nice terminal to terminal time that can be vaguely prototypical if you want it to be. Thought about the peco kits, but for the money they're roughly the same price as second hand wagons, if you can get a bundle to bring the delivery down. Done a lovely job with that tarp wagon, given me something to think about for sure!
Hi Mike you do make some wonderful layouts and videos to go with them.As for the buildings etc,in my village we have a wonderful old Victorian waiting room,i can remember it when a coal fire was roaring away in it.The powers to be thought it would be a good idea for some reason to knock it down! That was until a local historian said to the workmen 'you do realise that is a listed building' for some reason they didnt! So work stopped for a month or so and they had to rebuild the waiting room! Keep up the good work Mike :)
@@BudgetModelRailways You’ve a lot of experience there, I’d about 30years Planes and a bit of armour. I joined the dark side and went N Gauge thanks to my father just under a year ago 👍🏼 Super channel! Ian
@@bugler75 I got to the stage I knew as much as I could about post 1945 AFVs and planes, so when my 9 year old son wanted a model railway it meant I could learn a whole new subject, especially the modelling aspect.
@@BudgetModelRailways A fellow Cold War modeller then? 👍🏼 The model railway really has taken me down another route of modelling and I’m really loving it. Ian
Another simple but effective layout! thanks! It would be fairly simple to add an isolated section at the buffers end of the station (with a simple push button to restore power when needed), so that a goods train could run in and the wagons drawn off into the sidings for inglenook shunting by a second loco - then the original loco could depart back to the yard. This would mean that you could join two ingle nook puzzles together, and the finished train from one becomes the incoming train on the other - puzzle re-starts. A sort of inglenook tennis!
Plaza Japan has really inexpensive Kato locos and rolling stock. Like $12 u.s. for a nice coach. Problem is the shipping is about $25, but arrives to the states in a week or less!
If I ever do N gauge I would start with kato, their products seem awesome and they dont break the bank! Not much in british N that I am interested anyway, I have a small collection of 00/Ho locos and I just enjoy running those. I started collecting bakugan marbles again and they occupy less space and storage compared to trains😅
You are right about the Eras, I like Era1 and 2, smaller locos and smaller rolling stock. Era 1 had the weird historical ones, Era 2 had the basic designs sorted out, Era 3 they just got bigger and faster and needed bigger radius curves, but on small layouts with small radius who needs speed or long bogie carriages? Here in Qld Oz our first 3'6" locos from 1865 to 1875 were UK imports or Baldwins 4-4-0, after that we made them locally and merged the styles, with bigger tenders for the longer distances. I am focusing on the Gaslamp eras. The gas lighting time period is about the same as early steam era. Here Gas street lights are from 1878 to 1919. And because I am on a budget and not many products are made in these eras I save money because there is nothing to buy, haha.
You convinced me, I just ordered a Kato 11-107 chassis, if 4 wheels are good, 8 should be better, plus I want to print a Climax A body for it in TT scale. Also ordered a few Peco 9ft frames, wooden and iron, to see if they scale to the 7ft frames we used here in Qld on 3'6". I like these Inglenooks, if only turnouts didn't cost so much. Only got a single Kato loop so far. Looking into scratch building track n turnouts, that is the budget way to do it after all.
You will need to add weight to the 8 wheel chassis, but then they are very good. They can be a big fragile and need careful handling, I've broken 2, but I do have clumsy hands lol
@@BudgetModelRailways Got good hand skills, used to solder 0201 parts and stereo microscopes, er a few times. Anyway, was going through my old reference images, the class 8D-11 was a 0-4-4-0 double Fairlie called "Robert Fairlie". Might be able to hide the Kato mech under that. I wish Tungsten was easy to cast and machine, it would give me plenty of weight in these tiny locos. Gold would cast n machine well but this is budget modeling.
Interesting to hear your views about modeling eras. Here in the US, N is moving away from the transition era (1920s-1960s) and towards the modern era. The downside to that is that the cars and locomotives are much bigger in the modern era. That makes it difficult to build a small layout with modern equipment. HO still has the broadest choice in terms of cars and locos. It seems like O here is still more transition era, but the size gives you lots of nice details on equipment from that period.
As to your comment on the narrow time period of modelling, (although I'm guilty of loveing Era 3 west coast myself) i would love to see some interesting models for industrial scenes from the late 19th century, with some mainline 4-4-0s
Love the peco wagon kits, most of my rolling stock are peco kits. Great fun to build and paint. Union Mills are my favorite locos, they are reliable, powerful and good value. Not as detailed as the GF or Dapol locos, but run so beautifully. Unfortunately when they closed the 2nd hand prices shot through the roof.
Nice one mate, great to see that you can get around the price issue which you rightly point out. Those Kato locos really are awesome looking and the temptation to use ‘N’ as an excuse to go ‘foreign’ is getting ever greater, not least because I fancy a crack at a long viaduct with a swing bridge over a wide river-mouth at some stage and I suspect this would be a far easier option than OO! 😉 Wouldn’t want anything too flash but something like a (somewhat shorter) Japanese version of Barmouth would do the job for me! Not even bothered about a station as such, though a dockside would always be a temptation 😎 Cheers mate 🍀🍻👍
Totally agree mate, just purchased Rio Grande passenger train n scale, ABA locos and 8 carriages, second hand , i donated my kidney for it , and soid an arm and a leg to ship it to Australia, then there was tax 😲😲😲😲 am looking at Japanese steam loco with carriages from Japan, free delivery and half the price, think my layout is going to have Japanese aspects to it lol , have a good one mate, enjoy your channel 😎😎😎
I would agree completely with what you said about the limited range especially for someone whose just coming into their dare I say it - 40s , a lot of the trains out there are from a time I wasn’t around or barely can remember , thankfully I live in the north so trusty old dmus are kicking around , but a lot of people getting into the hobby will have no physical connection to the trains that they can buy… i spent most of my early adult life on the class 185s , which I’ve only seen as a 3d print in any scale
I agree. As per my rant on the hobby not Dying, too much of the narrative around model railways is coming from the 70+, this is no way to grow the hobby. My son is 20 and wants to model the railway he knows now, but there is virtually no choice in any scale.
Thanks for the video, saw the Kato BR electric loco for £39,but decided too get the trams instead, definitely worth looking at in the future I'd have too have a terrier on the push,pull though just love them. I think Kato is doing an 009 steam engine for about £144!!😎🚃🚂🇬🇧
I don''t think that modern high speed locos and carriages can compete with the steam era with goods yards, coal bunkers etc....I think the trains are a mirror reflection of our youth....memoroes we hold still....that's my gut feeling.
That's true for most, but of course not for anyone younger than about 60, in my case I had no interest in railways until 10 years ago, so nostalgia plays no part for instance
Seen Tomix sets going for a song online recently. Loco plus a rake of 3-6 coaches. Anyone got experience with them? Going freelance is looking more and more appealing, although it's not my preferred period
UK N scale is 1:148, Japanese N scale is 1:150 and everone else's N scale is 1:160. The closeness of the UK and Japanese scales should allow for a bit of poetic licence when trying to put a UK outline railway together without having to shell out loads for a loco. I too swear by the Peco kits!
For the period of modelling, I'm guilty of being interested by the 1923-1968 period... I'm not doing that by nostalgia, I was born in 1967 and I had never seen steam engines outside museums. It's more an historical recreation half-prototype half-freelance. For France, the period between 1870 and 1937 with the great private companies is not represented at all in model form... And for the beginnings, between 1840 and 1870, you have zero things. No history-minded people like me are interested in model trains it seems... In N scale, I had found an Arnold DMU I had traveled into a real one recently, and I see some departing and arriving from my favorite railway station of Grenoble, and the BB 75000, the last model of the SNCF diesel engines, recently put into service, from the French manufacturer REE Models. Seems contemporary modellers are listened to in France...
I do like the Kato stuff you've been showcasing, but simply sticking a logo on the side of their generic cab is (imo) at best lazy, and at worst a cynical cash grabbing exercise. If licensing is the issue, surely they'd be better off just sticking with selling chassis for people to stick their own bodies on - its ridiculous how many people are selling their own 3D printed stuff now. (I wonder if that is a big part of the reason why traditional model shops are suffering so much, but that's a different rant.)
I guess it's the same as Lima with their freelance diesel in the 1970s. Certainly it's difficult to see why the logo adds so much cost. I will stick to the freelance ones, but wanted to show people the option. It is still the cheapest and best running small UK outline lico5
Most people, myself included, have ONE layout. One of the things I admire about you and your channel, besides the budget part, is the sheer number of layouts you produce. More power to your elbow. Cheers
To be fair, without moving to N I would probably only have maybe two layouts. Mind you I am selling another one to make room lol
The Kato system of raised track beds is phenomenal in n gauge and I would seriously recommend it for n gauge especially when turnouts are used. Never any electrical problem unlike the conventional peco way. The turnouts are however subtle with a 15 degree turn making them long for an inglenook layout..but together with the Kato controller and turnout controllers make a great hands free experience. British rolling stock is so expensive. Thats why I use German rolling stock which can be found a lot cheaper than the Graham Farish stuff on ebay and the quality is excellent by Fleischmann, Minitrix and Roco.
I've never had electrical issues with peco track. I do like Kato track but the points are simply to big for shunting layouts. I did use it for my last exhibition layout very successfully though
I have started using the Kato compact turnouts that are specifically made for the Pocket Line equipment. They come in pairs in the CV-2 track set with other track, controllers and cables or individually. They can replace a 124 mm straight or a 150mm radius curve. I combined it with a CV-1 circle of track to get a circle of track 24 inches by 13 inches with a two track yard. Cheers.
The compact turnouts were too expensive for me thats why I opted for the 15 degree ones.@@Maurice00PA
I like the look of the new Kato trams and wonder how easy it would be to remove the pantograph and them as an old fashioned looking DMU?
Brilliant video.
I have truly got the Kato N bug thanks to this channel.
I've made two excellent recent purchases from Japan:
1 Japanese C56 2-6-0 steam tender loco. Incredible detail, directional lights, beautiful connecting rods and valve gear and the usual impeccable Kato motor. £65. Also picked up a rake of four coaches for it with working switchable tail lights for £33.
2 the modern Swiss Glacier express - electric loco and two unusual-looking panoramic coaches for £44. Plus a further four coaches for £50 to make a full train.
Delivery was £20.
The value of Kato is quite incredible especially at current exchange rates - the yen is pretty weak.
Creativity always finds a way to emerge into something great. I enjoy how BMR has recently used the Inglenook puzzle to form the basis of layouts. A lot seems to happen with just two points.
Insert the Inglenook into a loop (as you have done) and employing 40’ wagons will allow for maximum train running and operations. I’ve stayed with 40’ wagons on my USA layouts and it’s amazing how being able to fit that “one last” wagons adds to the shunting possibilities. 😊
You can always find bargains at shows and get nice pre-owned wagons or loco's for small prices(found a jinty for 3 pound great runner too),I really like your view on modelling as it isn't rivet counting and gives a fresh look at the hobby
I’ve got that exact same Kato loco and can confirm it’s a silky smooth runner, and for the price you got it for, an absolute steal.
As my first entry into N-Gauge and model railways in general, I was lucky to pick up a vintage Graham Farish Bulleid 4-6-2 steam loco off eBay for just £40, which was a surprisingly good runner (apart from the loose tender which detaches if I run it too fast) for that money. Got a rake of 5 Lima Mk1 coaches (2 in SR Green and 3 in LMS Maroon) to go with it, also for £40 or about £8 per carriage.
The pre-grouping era was fascinating, not least in terms of its operational potential. Passenger train arrives, either the loco has to run-round or a replacement loco needs to be added, in some cases the rake was pulled out of the 'arrivals' platform and pushed into the 'departures' platform, and of course there might be a horse box or parcels van attached. Goods traffic was very varied, lots of shunting even at a smaller station, lots to think about, lots to do. Cut to the present era . . . Well there are emu's and dmu's running back and forth but freight consists almost exclusively of block trains, so watching trains go by is about it. My own interest in modern railways pretty much died with the end of Speedlink, as did the interest of my god son. Reliability is crucial, lack of it saw my own interest wane and generally deflated the people I tried to help build their own layouts. The Kato pocket line approach looks promising, especially if people such as yourselves produce suitable bodies for the locos. The Peco 15' chassis can be extended (you have to cut it diagonally), you could offer an insert for the chassis plus a generic 4-wheeler coach body similar to the late lamented Farish examples. Hornby loudly proclaim that they 'do not make toys', which is a little bit silly as the museum model market is somewhat niche. Toys generally are very hard to find these days, there is a lot of 'merchandising' to put in the attic alongside the rare beany baby and the limited edition pet rock in the hope it'll give you a boost when you retire, but toys are rather more sophisticated. So, keep up the good work, when a layout works it can be an absorbing hobby and the likes of Buckingham Great Central and the glorious Madder Valley Railway show what can be achieved with (largely) recycled household waste (still better than the commercial offerings).
Thanks for the comment, lots of good points in there. It's all playing with toy trains however much they cost lol
I started collection my bits and bobs about 10yrs ago, a fair bit of 2nd hand. Certainly helped keep the cost down.
Great video as always, I love your opinions and agree there Should be some cheaper options for UK outline available. I wish there were UK loco kits available
For value for UK N gauge modelling, cannot really beat for my money the dapol twin coach packs for GWR. c£33 for 2 coaches with pretty solid detailing that run smooth. They work best on 2nd radius but can take first if the coupling on your loco has a bit of play on it.
My dapol autocoah has some trouble uncoupling on slopes and 1st radius which is a shame but otherwise for £15-20 it's ideal to run on a small end to end layout. Don't need a huge rake or passing loops, just a nice terminal to terminal time that can be vaguely prototypical if you want it to be.
Thought about the peco kits, but for the money they're roughly the same price as second hand wagons, if you can get a bundle to bring the delivery down. Done a lovely job with that tarp wagon, given me something to think about for sure!
Hi Mike you do make some wonderful layouts and videos to go with them.As for the buildings etc,in my village we have a wonderful old Victorian waiting room,i can remember it when a coal fire was roaring away in it.The powers to be thought it would be a good idea for some reason to knock it down! That was until a local historian said to the workmen 'you do realise that is a listed building' for some reason they didnt! So work stopped for a month or so and they had to rebuild the waiting room! Keep up the good work Mike :)
Great video, I learnt quite a bit from you and from the comments quite new to railways after many years building aircraft models.
Thanks,
Ian
I spent 40 years making tanks and planes, before moving to trains 10 years ago
@@BudgetModelRailways You’ve a lot of experience there, I’d about 30years Planes and a bit of armour.
I joined the dark side and went N Gauge thanks to my father just under a year ago 👍🏼
Super channel!
Ian
@@bugler75 I got to the stage I knew as much as I could about post 1945 AFVs and planes, so when my 9 year old son wanted a model railway it meant I could learn a whole new subject, especially the modelling aspect.
@@BudgetModelRailways A fellow Cold War modeller then? 👍🏼
The model railway really has taken me down another route of modelling and I’m really loving it.
Ian
Another simple but effective layout! thanks! It would be fairly simple to add an isolated section at the buffers end of the station (with a simple push button to restore power when needed), so that a goods train could run in and the wagons drawn off into the sidings for inglenook shunting by a second loco - then the original loco could depart back to the yard. This would mean that you could join two ingle nook puzzles together, and the finished train from one becomes the incoming train on the other - puzzle re-starts. A sort of inglenook tennis!
Sounds interesting thanks
Plaza Japan has really inexpensive Kato locos and rolling stock. Like $12 u.s. for a nice coach. Problem is the shipping is about $25, but arrives to the states in a week or less!
If I ever do N gauge I would start with kato, their products seem awesome and they dont break the bank! Not much in british N that I am interested anyway, I have a small collection of 00/Ho locos and I just enjoy running those.
I started collecting bakugan marbles again and they occupy less space and storage compared to trains😅
You are right about the Eras, I like Era1 and 2, smaller locos and smaller rolling stock. Era 1 had the weird historical ones, Era 2 had the basic designs sorted out, Era 3 they just got bigger and faster and needed bigger radius curves, but on small layouts with small radius who needs speed or long bogie carriages? Here in Qld Oz our first 3'6" locos from 1865 to 1875 were UK imports or Baldwins 4-4-0, after that we made them locally and merged the styles, with bigger tenders for the longer distances. I am focusing on the Gaslamp eras. The gas lighting time period is about the same as early steam era. Here Gas street lights are from 1878 to 1919. And because I am on a budget and not many products are made in these eras I save money because there is nothing to buy, haha.
You convinced me, I just ordered a Kato 11-107 chassis, if 4 wheels are good, 8 should be better, plus I want to print a Climax A body for it in TT scale. Also ordered a few Peco 9ft frames, wooden and iron, to see if they scale to the 7ft frames we used here in Qld on 3'6". I like these Inglenooks, if only turnouts didn't cost so much. Only got a single Kato loop so far. Looking into scratch building track n turnouts, that is the budget way to do it after all.
You will need to add weight to the 8 wheel chassis, but then they are very good. They can be a big fragile and need careful handling, I've broken 2, but I do have clumsy hands lol
@@BudgetModelRailways Got good hand skills, used to solder 0201 parts and stereo microscopes, er a few times. Anyway, was going through my old reference images, the class 8D-11 was a 0-4-4-0 double Fairlie called "Robert Fairlie". Might be able to hide the Kato mech under that. I wish Tungsten was easy to cast and machine, it would give me plenty of weight in these tiny locos. Gold would cast n machine well but this is budget modeling.
Interesting to hear your views about modeling eras. Here in the US, N is moving away from the transition era (1920s-1960s) and towards the modern era. The downside to that is that the cars and locomotives are much bigger in the modern era. That makes it difficult to build a small layout with modern equipment. HO still has the broadest choice in terms of cars and locos. It seems like O here is still more transition era, but the size gives you lots of nice details on equipment from that period.
Thanks for the insight
As to your comment on the narrow time period of modelling, (although I'm guilty of loveing Era 3 west coast myself) i would love to see some interesting models for industrial scenes from the late 19th century, with some mainline 4-4-0s
Love the peco wagon kits, most of my rolling stock are peco kits. Great fun to build and paint. Union Mills are my favorite locos, they are reliable, powerful and good value. Not as detailed as the GF or Dapol locos, but run so beautifully. Unfortunately when they closed the 2nd hand prices shot through the roof.
Yes I looked at them, but as you say prices are silly
As more choicesnof ready to run equipment has been offered in recent years, there's been a growing interest in pregrouping British railroads.
Love your micro layouts
These days I mainly buy Kato, Micro Ace and Tomix models as they are fantastic value for money and more affordable etc
Nice one mate, great to see that you can get around the price issue which you rightly point out. Those Kato locos really are awesome looking and the temptation to use ‘N’ as an excuse to go ‘foreign’ is getting ever greater, not least because I fancy a crack at a long viaduct with a swing bridge over a wide river-mouth at some stage and I suspect this would be a far easier option than OO! 😉
Wouldn’t want anything too flash but something like a (somewhat shorter) Japanese version of Barmouth would do the job for me! Not even bothered about a station as such, though a dockside would always be a temptation 😎
Cheers mate 🍀🍻👍
That's exactly what is in my mind, N gives you the space to be more ambitious
Totally agree mate, just purchased Rio Grande passenger train n scale, ABA locos and 8 carriages, second hand , i donated my kidney for it , and soid an arm and a leg to ship it to Australia, then there was tax 😲😲😲😲 am looking at Japanese steam loco with carriages from Japan, free delivery and half the price, think my layout is going to have Japanese aspects to it lol , have a good one mate, enjoy your channel 😎😎😎
I would agree completely with what you said about the limited range especially for someone whose just coming into their dare I say it - 40s , a lot of the trains out there are from a time I wasn’t around or barely can remember , thankfully I live in the north so trusty old dmus are kicking around , but a lot of people getting into the hobby will have no physical connection to the trains that they can buy… i spent most of my early adult life on the class 185s , which I’ve only seen as a 3d print in any scale
I agree. As per my rant on the hobby not Dying, too much of the narrative around model railways is coming from the 70+, this is no way to grow the hobby. My son is 20 and wants to model the railway he knows now, but there is virtually no choice in any scale.
Hello, awesome layout,you could use this in steam form as well, perfect small layout.
Thanks, sadly there are no budget UK steam locos, not even 2nd hand
Another really interesting video Mike... some great points here and thought provoking... cheers...
Thanks
Thanks for the video, saw the Kato BR electric loco for £39,but decided too get the trams instead, definitely worth looking at in the future I'd have too have a terrier on the push,pull though just love them. I think Kato is doing an 009 steam engine for about £144!!😎🚃🚂🇬🇧
Brilliant update derek love the rolling stock
Hia derek fancy doing a video on how you make your tarps for the wagons please
It's just tissue paper, painted and black washed
Astounding little Kato LoCos, great slow runners.
They are superb at any price, but exceptional at this price
@@BudgetModelRailways I have 3 Farish 08's all rough runners, will be having go at remotoring one.
@@crasher303 that's the problem with the UK outline locos
I don''t think that modern high speed locos and carriages can compete with the steam era with goods yards, coal bunkers etc....I think the trains are a mirror reflection of our youth....memoroes we hold still....that's my gut feeling.
That's true for most, but of course not for anyone younger than about 60, in my case I had no interest in railways until 10 years ago, so nostalgia plays no part for instance
What about 3D printed 0-4-0 steam loco for the Kato chassis ?
The issue is hiding the wheels etc
Maybe you could try designing the equivalent of a hornby 0-4-0 (Caledonian pug, GWR 101) on that unpowered kato pocket line 0-4-0?
We have toyed with the idea. The issue is hiding the wheels etc
Seen Tomix sets going for a song online recently. Loco plus a rake of 3-6 coaches. Anyone got experience with them? Going freelance is looking more and more appealing, although it's not my preferred period
Tomix are great, just as good as Kato
@@BudgetModelRailways Cheers for the tip, I'll keep my eyes peeled for the next one =)
I love the background on your N inglenook Mike. Is it done using watercolours? Cheers, Dudley
Hi yes, my talented wife painted it for me. Thanks
UK N scale is 1:148, Japanese N scale is 1:150 and everone else's N scale is 1:160.
The closeness of the UK and Japanese scales should allow for a bit of poetic licence when trying to put a UK outline railway together without having to shell out loads for a loco.
I too swear by the Peco kits!
🤠
For the period of modelling, I'm guilty of being interested by the 1923-1968 period... I'm not doing that by nostalgia, I was born in 1967 and I had never seen steam engines outside museums. It's more an historical recreation half-prototype half-freelance.
For France, the period between 1870 and 1937 with the great private companies is not represented at all in model form... And for the beginnings, between 1840 and 1870, you have zero things. No history-minded people like me are interested in model trains it seems... In N scale, I had found an Arnold DMU I had traveled into a real one recently, and I see some departing and arriving from my favorite railway station of Grenoble, and the BB 75000, the last model of the SNCF diesel engines, recently put into service, from the French manufacturer REE Models. Seems contemporary modellers are listened to in France...
I do like the Kato stuff you've been showcasing, but simply sticking a logo on the side of their generic cab is (imo) at best lazy, and at worst a cynical cash grabbing exercise. If licensing is the issue, surely they'd be better off just sticking with selling chassis for people to stick their own bodies on - its ridiculous how many people are selling their own 3D printed stuff now. (I wonder if that is a big part of the reason why traditional model shops are suffering so much, but that's a different rant.)
I guess it's the same as Lima with their freelance diesel in the 1970s. Certainly it's difficult to see why the logo adds so much cost. I will stick to the freelance ones, but wanted to show people the option. It is still the cheapest and best running small UK outline lico5