Yep, I’m N gauged!

This won’t come as a surprise to some readers, as I’ve worked in N gauge previously. A good few years back I built Collier Street which featured in Railway Modeller

This was built from a plan by my good friend and frequent partner in crime, Paul Lunn. The plan was from the N gauge Set track plan book to show what could be done to give a realistic look using off the shelf components, in addition to set track.

Over the past few years I’ve been aware of the improvements in N gauge Uk outline equipment, the downside for me has always been the track. Having friends whom work in 2mm Finescale has also been an influence. Seeing how adapting RTR products or scratch building models that look and run really well and reliably has helped that slow burn of interest.

A few years back just after they were introduced I bought myself an N gauge Finetrax point kit, which sat on the shelf of doom for a long time. When I put it together it was refreshing as to how relatively easy it was.

This was one of the first designs of point kit, individually fixing rail chairs onto a point base, taking me back to the days of hand building EM track with C&L track. The test piece though, that lit a slow burner.

We can see in the earlier picture that there’s not a big difference between a Peco OO large radius point footprint and this N B7, and the opportunity to use a shelf layout volume I’m familiar with, and applying it to 2mm N gauge is beginning to scratch that itch.

That scratch however is feeling really good, going back as far as the early noughties, and then cling what was going to be a OO layout off the bucket list!