Quote from: ismangil on April 03, 2026, 06:02:30 PMHi all, I'm new, not even bought anything yet still in the planning stage.

Mostly for space reason, I was considering N or Z or even T. But in UK I can't ignore the lack of Z or the singular T source.

Also deeper in my research I decided I like the shunting operations like Inglenook puzzle more than accurate depiction of prototype, that settled me on N, just the sheer amount of resources plus I live within 10 minutes drive of Rails of Sheffield.

Good luck with your build.
Please share photographs with us as you progress.

Why

56 years ago my father bought me a Lima class 86 for Christmas and it has been down hill ever since

Quote from: Snowwolflair on April 03, 2026, 11:21:03 PMWhy

56 years ago my father bought me a Lima class 86 for Christmas and it has been down hill ever since

Then stop living at the top of a hill

I had OO as a kid but when it came many years later to a little project with someone about computer control of model trains I only had some ikea shelves to put it on so at 50cm wide that really meant N for running stuff in circles and trying to get a computer to control with an H bridge (this is a long time ago....). So I ended up with a Farish large logo 50 and some coaches, and then I got back into model railways and it expanded a lot. I still like building Ikeabahn designs (ones that fit on one or two Ivar 83cm x 50cm shelves) as it's a great way to keep layouts mixed in with storage and also to store them as you can stack them as shelves in the units.


I did have a little OO shelf layout as well for a while but I sold it and concentrated on N.

TT was always my favourite size but apart from some old TT my grandfather had it was a nonexistent scale when it mattered and I'm not switching at this point.

I'd also always fancied a go at N having seen some of the N stuff in books in particular the kit built 03, which I eventually managed to end up with.

Modelling in N is perhaps a strong word - all I've really done so far is play trains! Anyway...

Like others I had 00 models as a kid, although the layout never extended much further than the occasional operation of a track loop with my dad. Then one day he came home with a Minitrix digital train set of a Swiss train (we were living there at the time), bought as an early birthday present to himself, which was my first exposure to N. What superb little models! I found (and still find) the engineering of these tiny models fascinating.

A few weeks later we went to a model show in town and I spotted a British loco and coach in an old Minitrix box. That's odd, I thought Minitrix only did continental stuff... I convinced my dad to buy it, and even convert it to DCC so it could run on his loop of track. It did so quite happily, albeit not very often.

Several houses, two countries, various health issues and a couple of decades later, I remembered that little loco and made a LEGO model of it (that's my other primary moneypit hobby). During that process I found John Heath's superb Minitrix repository, which re-kindled the model train flame. But the straw that broke the camel's back was a trip to Miniatur Wunderland with my partner. Being a month before Christmas, I bought a souvenir N wagon for my dad, and couldn't resist getting one for myself... It was roughly then that I figured out I have Adult Money now, and with space likely to be limited for the foreseeable, going back to N is the obvious choice!