Large Scale Central

Proposed An3 scale (or mm guage for our metric friends)

Other Scales
#1

Thanks to Tac I started snooping on T scale. It is tailor made for 3’ American narrow gauge modelers. In fact I am sure this is exactly what the Japanese creators had in mind when the created it but knew it wouldn’t sell in Japan so they didn’t market it that way. It is set on a 3mm gauge track, so naturally for 3’ modelers it is 1’=1mm or for the techies out there it is 1:286.73 scale. Now if you want to cheat the track could be used to model Zn3 (1:220 vs 1:287). But for us purists we would have to scratch build for complete accuracy (Can someone find me a 1:287 scale rivet to count). I now purpose we develop the new gauge “mm gauge”,No wait that sounds to European and that wont do for American bravado so we need “An3 scale” A standing for American, ya baby.

So break out your electron microscopes and tweezers my fellow American Narrow gauge nuts and lets get to building.

#2

It gets better ladies and gents. They make a wider sleeper flex track that has an interesting narrow gauge feel.

#3

Thanks to parts found here

http://www.tgauge.com/section/7/va/spares

You can find power pick up bogies motors gear boxes and geared drive bogies that all could be placed in the tender to drive your steam loco. You just make your loco a dummy.

#4

Sir?, I think you are in the wrong forum! Surprised(lol)

#5

Focus, Devon, focus. Cool

#6

Steve Featherkile said:

Focus, Devon, focus. Cool

Yup! That focus thingy.Cool

Makes me glad I’m going back to 1-1/2" ride-on stuff. I AM focused.Yell

#7

It will taker a tremendous amount of focus… them things are small. The actual T scale is just plane stupid small. need tweezers to take it on and off the track.

#8

Didn’t NMRA putatively reserve ‘A’ for 1/29th? You might be needing another letter, may ‘Y’?

Or whatever comes last and lowest on the opticians chart.

J.

#9

Jonathan J said:

Didn’t NMRA putatively reserve ‘A’ for 1/29th? You might be needing another letter, may ‘Y’?

Or whatever comes last and lowest on the opticians chart.

J.

Thanks for the heads up J.

Isn’t the last letter on the chart and A though, When I watched Space Cowboys I believe Tommy Lee Jones read the last line as " M A D E I N T H E U S A"

Well they already took z so can’t use that one. We will come up with something

Y could wok as in “y would we subject ourselves to this torture”

#10

Or “D” for darn small…I would have said F, for…but F is taken.

#11

Devon Sinsley said:

It will taker a tremendous amount of focus… them things are small. The actual T scale is just plane stupid small. need tweezers to take it on and off the track.

But just imagine; you could model the entire D&RGW in uncompressed scale in the basement of a reasonable size house!!! Not for me thank you. I need an OptiVisor to work on Fn3 Surprised

#12

CR&N had something like 27 miles of track so if I did the math right in DFn3 (Darn F’n small thanks David for that) that equates to 142,560 mm or 5612 inches or 467 feet. I need 467 linear feet to model every inch of the CR&N thats only 10 out and backs so I am thinking a 50 by 30 pole building will cover it.

#13

Battery power?

#14

John Caughey said:

Battery power?

Sure can borrow your hearing aid???

#15

@Devon - I think your math is kaput. 27 miles time 5,280 feet in a mile divided by 20.3 scale factor equal 7,022.66 feet of track. Times about $10 per foot and I could buy a smallish, but nice, house for that.

@John R - ME TOO!! :slight_smile:

#16

Um Bob -Devon’s made up DFn3 scale factor is about 304.8 if my math is correct. 1mm = 12 inches (or 304.8mm). 3 foot track gauge is 3mm.

#17

27 milesx5280=142560feetx12=1710720inchesx25.4=43452288mm/304.8 scale factor=142560mm/25.4=5612in/12=467ft of track

yup did it right.BTW I don’t know where I came up with 1:287 because 1:304.8 is correct.

Bob, one thing that has always burst my bubble in model RR is just how compressed it has to be in order to play. Even in T scale at 1:450 it would take 316 ft of track to model 27 miles.

I have had several lofty plans in the past only to realize that I can model about a mile of track. My current HO dream is to model the STMA yard as a static display. I need 12.6 feet by 6.5 feet and I am cutting off part of it.

On the other side of this discussion though is it is always amazing to me to see how well modelers give the illusion of distance in their layout.

#18

Should be M for micro scale, here is a practitioneer attempting to apply decals to a boxcar.

#19

Vic,

Thanks for that. I couldn’t stop laughing because I was wondering to myself if I could send a file to a vynal decal vender and ask them to print it so it is a half a MM tall and see what their response would be.

#20

Well, Del Tapporo is the guy to ask - why doncha?

tac

Ottawa Valley GRS

PS - hey, why are my posts double-spaced?