ON30 Anyone?

Ok, so I guess at this point you're probably asking the same question I was asking the other night, what exactly is ON30?!?

Well put simply it is narrow gauge railway modelling. It consists of a train or rolling stock modelled in 'O' gauge (that is roughly double the size of HO/OO gauge), but running on HO/OO gauge tracks.

Having seen this for the first time the other night I was massively intrigued as the models look to be awesomely detailed, but have the advantage of running on standard HO/OO track in the space an HO/OO gauge layout will take.

Expect to see a post of some ON30 rolling stock in the very near future - or when the postie can get it to me

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To whet your appetite, this is the loco I have coming;

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Oh my...that is beautiful.

You should see the coaches that go with it, they just arrived, still waiting on the locomotive :-)

Ok, work over so here's the pictures of the carriages I bought to go with the locomotive, there are 4 in total, 3 passenger and one passenger/brake car (the latter with working doors even )

Anyway without further ado here they are, complete with some close ups to show you some of the fantastic detailing, I've also included one show with one of the carriages and alongside it a Tomy wagon (the dragon thing which is one of the larger ones) and a Hornby OO gauge class 08 diesel, as you'll see both of these are only about half the length of one of these carriages and in reality quite a bit shorter height wise - note the angle of the shot actually makes the Tomy/Hornby look bigger in comparison than they actually are due to lens distortion (i.e. wide-angle).

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Those are beautiful...Wow. I absolutely love the window glazing, it has what looks to be a lens effect to them...they would look fantastic with in coach lighting. And that baggage car is really neat.

Aren't they just something special

I must admit to being blown away by them, the level of detail and the sheer quality of the printing on them, they are just works of art. These particular ones are not illuminated, however I understand the generic ones made by Bachmann are. As such I'm sure it would be possible to illuminate these and odds are I will do so at some point using some SMD LED strips, all I'd need to do is source some pickups and some suitable insulated axle wheels (Hornby do some nice metal ones).

I do have another batch on the way also, these are generic 'Christmas Express' ones rather than these snow/wolf themed ones, that is going to be awesome as there a good number of carriages/cars including a caboose. All I need to do now is source the appropriate loco to go with them and I'll have two lovely trains...

The locomotive arrived today and is even more beautiful than I imagined it would be, the level of detail is awesome. The first picture has a Hornby OO gauge guards van in front of the train to give you some clue to the size of this locomotive. Just for reference, taking away lens distortion the height of the guards van is such that the roof is only just as high as the top of the tender on the locomotive!!

That’s really cool! You can almost imagine a train like this working it’s way up a mountain pass in Colorado.

Having it scaled to run on standard gauge HO track is a plus because the thought of hand laying a bunch of narrow gauge rail claws at what remains of my sanity!

Totally agree on that one, the thought of having to create your own rails from scratch is a bit much even for me, despite liking to tinker with stuff lol!!

I have to admit having stumbled across ON30 I'm blown away by these models and have fallen in love with the quality of them

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That is wow for sure. Great details and love the hatch opening for shoveling the coal from the Tender on the rear of the cab.