Contemplating a different scale...

As PnC is a way off being constructed at the moment this blog is mainly documenting my thoughts before building the layout during the planning stage, therefore all sorts of things are going round my head at the moment.

One thought which has recently appeared is that of scale. I've always been a 009 man because of space restrictions and the fact that my 009 was part of an already existing 00 layout to begin with. However i've always liked larger scales, and in particular 0-16.5 and the other 7mm scales. Now, PnC would be absolutely huge in 7mm scale, but there is a compromise.

I first saw S scale when watching the Paul Scoles scenery DVDs i mentioned in an earlier blog. S Scale is 1:64 which equates to 4.8 mm to the foot as opposed to the 4mm to the foot 0f 009. Whilst this is not a substantial difference it does seem to improve things visually. 009 stock can often seem small to me (admittedly my stock is generally larger tank engines so this might not apply), and Sn3 stock seems rather nice and chunky looking.

A good compromise would be to use S scale for the layout, and to have 9mm gauge track which would represent a shade under 1' 11" gauge track - almost spot on for most UK based narrow gauge systems. This would still allow me to use 9mm gauge chassis for the locos (albeit adapted with new cylinders etc) to make my life easier. I was planning on scratchbuilding a lot of the layout to make sure that it was easilt recogniseable as a Parkside Dundas suchandsuch so the lack of any kits doesn't particularly bother me.

It's certainly something to consider, the major downside i can see is that the overall size difference between 4mm and S is around 19%, this will have quite an impact on the size of the trackplan i've developed for PnC. If i want to keep this then it will have to grow somewhat - potentially a problem if we move in the future.

S scale does look attractive, and will certainly be considered for future layouts, but i can see it's limitations for this layout. Having said that it would be different, and would certainly prove a challenge!! There seem to be absolutely no S scale narrow gauge layouts set in the UK, so this could be an interesting niche to explore at some point.

I'm planning on knocking up an S scale diorama to test out the theory some time to see how it compares to 009. I expect 009 will remain the scale of choice for PnC because of the size of the layout, and the proportion of the baseboards i can leave purely to scenery without any track, not to mention the availability of lineside details. These would reduce with S scale (something i want to avoid). A nice thought, but perhaps something for the future.