An Industrial Narrow Gauge Adventure

For the past six months, I have been working on the new Pen and Sword book that will feature a selection of scratch-built wargame terrain for the Napoleonic Wars. This book is now nearing completion and I have been looking around for a new project - something for me.

My plan (and remember that this is still a paper plan) is to build a small shelf layout featuring a couple of industrial narrow gauge engines, more than likely diesel or petrol narrow gauge engines and some simple skips. My ideas are based around some scratch-built narrow gauge engines that I built some time ago to 1.43rd scale or 7mm = 1 foot. For details see this post.

For anyone not familiar with this type of modelling, the engines are built to 7mm scale to run on modified HO-OO track - 16.5mm gauge which gives an actual track gauge of 2 foot 4 inches. Sometimes referred to as NG O-16.5.

I have looked at a number of options;

1 - Repeating the same scale/gauge formula - 7mm = 1 foot on 16,5mm track.
The modelled prototype would be 2 foot 4 inches/2 foot 6 inches.

2 - A much larger scale of 11mm = 1 foot on 16.5mm track
This would equate to a scale of 1:27,7 (1/24th - 1/25th) or a six foot man being represented as a figure 66mm or 2.5 inches tall. The modelled prototype would be 18inch gauge.

3 - A compromise between the two - a scale of 1/36th or 8.47mm = 1 foot (one third of an inch = 1 foot or a six foot man being modelled as a 2 inch figure - think 1/35th scale or thereabouts).
This would mimic a 600mm gauge on 16.5mm track.

As I said earlier, I have still to decide on the actual scale/gauge mix I will use, but I'm tempted with the 1/36th scale as 1/35th scale models and figures could be used with little modification.

I understand that these formula could be a little confusing to a non-narrow gauge modeller so here are a couple of links that might help;

Ogam and Stone - a 7mm Narrow Gauge railway layout, see this link.

Nystrup Gravel - a 1/35th scale narrow gauge railway running on 16.5mm track, see this link.

Hook Basin - a 1/25th scale narrow gauge running on 16.5mm track. see this link.

Keep checking back for updates and progress.

Tony

Update 30.06.17
I came across these images of a diorama layout by Marcel Ackle and thought the link was worth posting;
Link