Tuesday, February 2, 2010

S Scale in 4 x 8

I've kind of put modeling in HO scale on hold for awhile. There is just too much Southern Pacific equipment available in S Scale for me to resist, so I finally made the switch. I have a couple of Southern Pacific 2-8-2 Mikados from River Raisin and I just picked up a Southwind Models SP 4-4-2 from EBay for a really good price. The only problem is it's impossible to fit an S Scale layout onto a 4 x 8 foot table. Well, at least in standard gauge...
Narrow gauge is a different story. It turns out that HO scale track works out to 42" gauge in S Scale which is close enough for me to 3' gauge. So I've decided to build an Sn42 layout. My track plan will be based on the Gorre & Daphetid. The original Gorre & Daphetid was only 3'7" x 6'8" - I'll be scaling mine up by 12% to spread things out a little more. Even in HO Scale things wer a little crowded; even more so in S Scale.
For now, my locomotive roster will consist of a couple of diesel critters built from HO scale industrial switch engines. I hope to ad a 2-8-0 kitbashed from a Roundhouse Old Time Consolidation kit some time in the future. I have some Tichy Train HO scale ore cars I'm converting, and I'll run a few Southern Pacific box cars from P-B-L and an SP narrow gauge caboose from Wiseman Model Services. Stuctures will be a mix of Banta Modelworks kits and scratch built.
When I first made the switch to S Scale I thought I'd have to give up on 4 x 8 model railroads. A slight change in focus and a little thinking made me realize I can have a 4 x 8 model train layout in S Scale, just S Scale narrow gauge.