scaro

Cheers, thanks. No, I just wanted to check as someone told me he thought they were because they were replacement wheels.

Hi, Just wondering if these wheels are .088" or not? Regards, Ben

36" wheels in HO are 10.5mm dia Yeah, I'm aware of that but 36" are too big for what I need. (foul the bottom of the chassis.) Hence I wondered whether some manufacturer just made some that were a touch oversized, by accident etc. Little variations do happen.

I am wondering if any of the range of 33" metal wagon wheels of various manufacturers in HO are oversized? I know that IHC makes ones that are 31" hence, undersized. Ben

Hi Read a couple of online mentions that Lima's OO DMUs had 10mm dia wheels. Is this correct? Ben

getting away from the OP's comment a bit, but one US scenario that struck me as plausible was inspired by seeing a large scale MLW DL535 (as rostered on the 3' White Pass & Yukon) in fictional Rio Grande black /gold tiger stripes with speed lettering. my idea was a Western Pacific 3' subsidiary up in the mountains with shovelnoses in the orange /silver made famous by the 'california zephyr' and DL535s in the WP's various pumpkin orange/green or perlman era green w/orange stripes, with maybe an Alco MRS1 or something similar in a switcher scheme. WP's square 'Feather River Route' logo would have looked nice on slim gauge steam as well. one that may have even gotten to the level of being a serious proposal but never made it into reality was SD40T-2 tunnel motors on the clinchfield railroad, a mountainous eastern coal haulier with lots of tunnels. in the australian context, state railway departmental draftsmen were avid drawers-up of proposals that never made it into cold steel, usually larger versions of existing locos that were inherently unlikely due to limited axle loadings and lack of cash. there is a fine line between a 'plausible' fantasy though and something that's just 'plain silly' to use the technical term. getting any two people to agree where that fine line lies, hmm, well there's the rub. ben

There is a small group of South Australian P4 modellers who use either 20mm or 21mm gauge (believe it's 20mm) to depict 5'3". I don't know if they've done any Adelaide suburban trains but the work looks superb. I do not know if any of them models Victorian apart from some early steam era stuff by Frank Kelly. It is worth researching a lot before going down the path of trying to use a minority scale to model an exotic prototype. 3mm scale (which is not TT, it used to be called TT3 but not even that term is used much any more) on 16.5mm track has been suggested as a way of modelling Indian 5'6" railways and I believe a couple of British expat 3mm modellers had thought about it as a way of depicting Spanish or Portuguese railways. B.

Possibly but since its still a principally British forum it might not attract much. Aside from Andy May from the S Gauge group with his Western Australian stuff, and the more recent addition of 'Broadford' there doesn't seem to be much publicly visible Aussie modelling in the UK. But I think that's largely down to lacklustre promotion at the Australian end. B.

Indeed it is international, and there are a few expat Australian members too. Sadly next to no opportunity is taken to exploit the expatriate market by the railway publishing industry in Australia. There is a market about the size of the city of Hobart in the United Kingdom, the vast bulk in or around London. Further, the Brits are renowned for their interest in trains from all round the world, but most particularly in countries where there was a strong British input and influence on local railways. As one of the staff said at a London transport bookshop yesterday, recounting his long held frustration at his failure to convince an Australian publisher that there was a market for Australian railwayana in the UK, the guy 'couldn't understand why we'd be interested in Australian railways. Why? We only built the things, that's why!' New Zealand publishers by contrast are far more inclined to notice the niche and cater to offshore interest. The only Australian railway magazine available in London is Narrow Gauge Down Under, ironically the magazine with the least local content- every time I look at it, it seems to be focussed on American narrow gauge. A wasted opportunity. Ben