With Narrow Gauge.
Hello Kiwi's! [Can I call you that?]
An introduction is in order:
I'm Ron Wm. Hurlbut on the oposite side of the world from New Zealand [more or less] in Toronto, Ontario, Dominion of Canada.
I had an HO Trainset as a kid, but dropped out of the hobby for twenty-odd years. I rejoined a few years ago [almost 10-years now] and I've been floundering about ever since.
I've dabbled in On30 and had a hand in developing Module Standards for that scale/gauge.
Generic - On30 Coalition Module Standards: http://www.vif.com/users/r-rhurlbut/On30-Modules/
Free-MOn30 Module Standards: http://www.vif.com/users/r-rhurlbut/On30-Modules/
I've also tried Hn42 [Garden Scale - 1:24 Half-inch scale on 45mm/1.75-inch track = 42-inch gauge] but the move from a house to a Condominium has curtailed that pursuit.
Through those experiences I became involved with a varied group of Narrow Gauge Model Railroaders and have helped to organize and run the Ontario Narrow Gauge Show the past few years: http://www.narrowgaugemadness.com/
The internet has exposed me to all sorts of railway goodness and I've had trouble settling down and focusing on anything to the point of building a functioning model railway.
My interest is in Canadian Railway History: Not to duplicate it, but to complicate it.
That is to say: I want to know what happened in the past in order to explain why things are the way they are now.
Find the point of convergence in history in order to rewrite it up to the present and into the future.
I don't want to model a prototype, but I want to be prototypical in my free-lancing.
I got lured into On30 being "More Funner", but aside from some pioneers the rest are pretty much all doing variations on the same theme and mostly stuck in the steam era.
So, never mind what I'm not doing...
What I want to do is create a modern Canadian Narrow Gauge Railway.
Following The Golden rule for a loading gauge:
WIDTH 3.25 times track gauge
HEIGHT 5.25 times track gauge
30-inches is just a hair too tight for carrying modern 53-foot containers. Not to mention that those 53-foot containers would be huge in O Scale. So that disqualified On30 for me.
Canada had several 42-inch gauge railways, so...
I first looked at Sn3.5 and thought that this would be ideal. HO Track and mechanisms that can be scratched and bashed into the railway of my dreams.
However, S-Scale is still too big for my space.
Back to HO-Scale: This took some serious consideration, but then it means 12mm gauge track and mechanisms from scarce/espensive TT-Scale and or HOm/HOn3.5.
Any which way, I wasn't ready to take the plunge.
In the meantime, I've been armchair modelling and listening to a friend of mine who is doing the Model Rail Radio Podcast: http://www.modelrailradio.com/archive.html
Recently, I heard Ben call in to the Podcast and talk about NZ120!
WoW! This sounds like the Scale/Gauge that I am looking for, so here I am.
