Hello everyone,

right, determined to get back blogging and true to the title, another truly random tangent of N-gaugery, this time going narrow gauge. A while back as a sheer impulse buy I picked up a 2mm/ft static model kit of a GWR era Vale of Rheidol railway carriage from NBrass. I have to confess this has sat for a year or two on a shelf but inspired by some 009 carriage-bodging I had been working on (more of this soon) I wondered if it could be made into something vaguely 'operational'.

As I have mentioned in the past, I have a bundle of T-gauge equipment but have yet to work out a plan for what to do with it. There have been a number of interesting layouts and models built representing various narrow gauges alongside N, usually employing the fairly wide 6.5mm gauge track adapted from Z gauge.

I did a bit of maths and figured that 3mm gauge (as denoted by the T in Tgauge) in scales around the 1:150 region works out at near enough 18" gauge, so in theory good for representing railways at the larger end of 'miniature' but a bit short of a proper 'narrow' representation. In fact to represent 2' gauge in theory you are better off modelling at 1:220 scale where you can at least borrow scenic bits and bobs from established Z gauge suppliers.

However I reckon it is not quite that simple, and that this T-gauge stuff can be used to represent 2' gauge in N. Remember that the T gauge flexi track (as illustrated below) has quite 'chunky' section rail so the overall impression is of a track wider than the nominal gauge suggests, add to that the height (..code) of the rail and it does look more substantial in a 1:150 gauge context than a lightly laid 18" line.

Are you keeping up with all this waffle, well done if you are!

So, to cut a long story short, I stuck together said carriage kit and mounted it on a plain T gauge 'adjustable' truck chassis. Happily, it was about the right length without needing adjusting so saved me the bother of hacking it about. The couplers are no longer of any use but they are not too clever in the way they couple anyway, so I will have to rethink joining vehicles together.

And you know what it kind of works. I think i'd rather the narrow gauge track beneath it was too narrow than too wide (as in the case of N6.5...) and sat on some track, it is not as unstable and wobbly as I'd imagined.

I will continue the research!