On30 vs On3

Mike,

that is exactly what I am doing.  I bought 3 MMI On30 locos (C-19, K-27, K-28) and a bunch of On30 AMS & San Juan car co freight  &  pax cars.

i am creating what will be profitable railroad running from the Tidewater area of VA to the Blue ridge mountains.

The decrepit, Whimsical Bachmann    On30 layouts are not my cup of tea.

i'm using Micro Egineering  code 83 track & turnouts.  The layout will occupy a 1000 ft2 area.

I'm only working in On30 because the locomotives I'd always wanted were made only in that scale and I don't have the skills to reliably re-gauge them.

I can't stand whimsical layouts, you won't be seeing that on mine when its done.

Guys

Thanks for the encouragement.  Lee I just viewed your layout on your web site, great concept and great looking

Mike

It can be done in On30, but if I was starting today I would go with Sn3.

Jeff C

Thanks, Mike. It's more of a 'Plywood Central' right now but I'll be getting scenery started soon...

Bachmann make it fairly easily to re-gauge their locos.

Grandtline makes re-gauge parts & kits as well.

Many items are available in brass as well.

'Easy' is relative to your experience base.

I've seen two locomotives re-gauged which should have been easy but each modeler said they were anything but and both worked horribly.

I'd never dream if trying it myself based on that.

Besides, for me it's a moot point now as I'm deeply committed to On30 at this point.

I feel like I see more 'scale' layouts than 'whimsical' ones.....

Most recent On30 I photoed........

For me the thing that would really put me over the top in On30 would be a nice model of the 8-18c 4-4-0. MMI announced one quite a while ago but it was never made.

IMO this is a loco that would be better if it was brought to market by Bachmann, at a price point similar to the 10 wheeler.

Jeff C

Any of you guys ever check out Joey Ricard's site,as well as his posting! You can get some souper good ideas from him!

I wished now, that I had investigated the hobby more, when I got back into it, before diving into 3Rail Scale. Joey has installed a new switch control scheme on his new layout, that is state of the art.....................Brandy!

On30 too "whimsical"?

Well, there's an On30 group on Facebook--more than 1,000 members strong in just a short time--that regularly displays some of the finest narrow gauge (or any gauge) modeling you'll ever see. Some members are also participants on this forum.

Some folks prefer a whimsical look, and there's certainly absolutely nothing wrong with that approach. But those who aim for a more realistic/prototypical look with On30 are creating models and layouts that rival anything out there in any scale.

It used to be, far more than it seems now. Just go look up early On30 stuff. There's a lot of stuff out there that'd make a 'out of the box 3-railer' blush for realism.

There are plenty of whimsical layouts still out there, but I'd argue that now that On30 has become pretty mainstream (much to the dismay of the writers at Model Railroader who still won't use the On30 label exclusively), perhaps far more so than the more accurate gauge of On3, you're now seeing modelers really apply some decent skills to serious layouts in On30. I think once good, inexpensive models atarted coming out, people with serious concepts and designs jumped into On30 and streered it to a more realisitic use.

Even the On30 annual concurs that many are attracted to the whimsical nature of the gauge itself: http://on30annual.com/extra/on...tra_introduction.php

Whimsey in model railroading isn't something that spins my spurs. You'll never find a crashed UFO being recovered by the Army, a bigfoot figure hising out behind a tree, or any of the other whimseys I've seen numerous times on several layouts of different scales. But yeah, On30 seems to have brought more than it's fair share of this.

To each their own, but that ain't my shtick...