Why in the heck am I not in 00 gauge!?

[longbow]

Curiously I and my fellow club members all agree that if we weren't modelling in 2mm we'd be doing it in 7mm.

[daffy]

Many thanks to both Webbo and Andy for the excellent advice  - I shall watch carefully for surface tension problems in particular around the stream rocks I will be including. Also make sure I don't have the stuff running away from me - may have to tilt the baseboard to stop it all flowing away to the bottom of the stream run.

Anyway, to help return this thread to its theme, I'm not in OO Gauge cos I can't afford that much Woodland Scenics Real Water!

[Webbo]

One more water feature post, and then I'll shut up on this subject.

As Andy suggests, Realistic Water is capable of creeping through tiny crevices so it is important to get the basin sealed properly before you pour it. Looking at application experiences on the web, it also seems that RW can react badly with some substances including PVA as pointed out by Andy. I filled the screw depressions in my lake bed with some sort of wood filler that I then sanded flat and painted the whole lot. After the RW had set, the fill areas began to turn whiteish much to my horror. After a couple of months the whiteishness disappeared, luckily. Apparently, RW turns white on contact with water so I'm thinking that a small amount of water had leached out of my wood filler and that this eventually evaporated. Woodland Scenics makes some stuff called Flex Paste recommended for use under water features amongst other uses. Also, pretty $$$ and I found it doesn't take my acrylic paint very well.

Following on from longbow's comment, I was wondering what 7 mm scale was and found the following statement: "7 mm scale, also known as British 0 scale is a model railway scale of 1:43.5 The scale is thus different from American 0 scale (1:48) and European 0 scale (1:45)". That makes it double the size of HO. British O has a gauge of 32 mm, whereas  standard gauge scaled to 7 mm scale has gauge of 33 mm - so pretty good.

Webbo

[first timer]

Space is the main reason why we model n gauge but I also think that it looks more realistic than oo

[Mike Hamilton]

I do in a weird perverse kind of way like N Gauge.  OK, the prices for some things are stupidly high, the choice of locos, as others have said is more limited, but because of the intricacies, it does make you think.  Its no so "plug and play" as OO.
The space saving factor for me is the real benefit and by only having a layout 6'6" x 2' enables me to have far more useable space than I would ever have had in OO.