I’ve been in HO all my life and now find I want to try narrow guage. However, newly arrived in Italy and having to search the web, I’m having a little trouble locating a suitable locomotive like a shay, heisler, or climax for narrow guage. Everything I’ve found so far is standard guage and everything in the hobby shops here in Trieste is European. Any suggestions ??? I need some help here. Back in the 60’s PFM made some really nice brass stuff, but they were like buying gold bars from Ft Knox, or even gold pressed latinum (for the Farengi’s out there) for that matter.
MDC/Roundhouse, now Athearn/Horizon made their Shay kits in both HO and HOn3, I think they may have also offered them in RTR. Haven’t heard if they still offer them.
Other than that, there’s only brass for Shays and other geared locos. On30 has it a lot better, Shay and Climax locos available from Bachmann for around $125.00, and they are great!
Bob Boudreau
you don’t mention if you’re adding to an existing layout or starting fresh (possible since you’ve moved recently) . if i was starting fresh i’d go with On30 , there’s some really nice equipment out there now
in HOn3 there’s not much right now , ConCor has a galloping goose , keystone has the unpowered shay kit that can be powered with a NWSL kit . Soundtraxx and Precsion scale are both coming out with engines , probably later this year . unfortunately MDC/roundhouse’s website shows no sign of the shay in kit or RTR
The following is what I have found for less than brass prices for HOn3 geared locomotives:
Roundhouse/MDC: Produced 2 and 3 truck Shays in kit form in both HO and HOn3. Virtually the same locomotive in both gauges, which makes the frame a bit wide and high for narrow gauge. Near the end of the production run, they offered RTR versions, but I think (could be wrong here) very few RTR were made in HOn3. The RTR have a very poor track record of running well out of the box for any length of time. Apparently, the unskilled labor used to assemble the RTR assembled it without fixing any of the known design flaws that most modelers fix during kit assembly. Horizon Hobby has not started production of the Shays back up, and are probably not likely to because of the cost of re-engineering the drive or dealing with the high percentage return problem, and the competition from Bachmann’s Spectrum Shay in standard gauge. There are still plenty of Roundhouse Shays available on eBay and at some hobby shops. Highly recommended is Hank Johnston’s (sp?) book, “The Roundhouse Shay Handbook”. Book is out of print, but used copies can usually be found from Amazon. Also highly recommended is the regear kit from NWSL.
Keystone: Produces a non-motorized 20T Shay kit in pewter. Made in HO, HOn3, and HOn30 versions. Not sure of the differences between the versions. NWSL made a motorizing kit for the Keystone Shay but has stopped production because of inability to get suitable frame pieces from Keystone. The motorizing kits are still available on eBay and at some hobby shops. The standard gauge kit and motorizing kits are much more available than the HOn3 version.
Modelers have used N mechanisms, Roundhouse Shays, and NWSL Keystone motorizing kits as a basis for a mostly scratchbuilt Climax in HOn3.
Bob is right - On30 is the narrow gauge that has it all in mostly RTR at present. Locomotives, rolling stock, track - it’s all there and at mostly reasonable prices. My issue wi
Hi Roger and [#welcome]
HOn3, in general, is pretty much a scratch building / kit bashing endeavor. I did a quick search for locomotives on the Walthers site and Con Cor’s Railbus was the only hit. However, Walthers is no longer the distributor of Model Die Cast products which have made HOn3 Shays. Horizon hobby has bought MDC, along with Athearn, and have not produced anything at this time.
As for HOn3 rolling stock (Walthers search), there’s offerings from Durango Press, Funargo & Camerlengo, Grandt Line, Micro Trains, Precision Scale and a few others.. Nothing on passenger cars.
There are manufactured HOn3 gauge tracks from Shinohara, Precision Scale, Micro Engineering. BK Enterprises offers turnout and crossing kits, but they have to be special ordered which could take up to, or even more, than a year.
Figure the cost of product plus shipping to Italy, duty and Euro tax, it will double the cost of everything, if you purchased U.S. goods. There goes your retirement funds. Not to mention the time to clear customs. And there is no guarantee nothing will get pilfered in the process.
You might want to look into HOe which is European narrow gauge which is the same as HOn30 (30 inch gauge or HOn2.5 foot). They can run on N scale track. Wonder around the HOn30 Depot for some ideas and information.
Check this site http://narrowgaugecolorado.com/?name=Home
and http://www.blackstonemodels.com/
Enjoy
Paul
The Roundhouse/MDC HOn3 Shay was the only non-brass RTR geared loco produced. They occasionally show up on Ebay. As already noted, this model is rather large for a narrowgauge Shay. Otherwise, brass is the only current alternative, although it wouldn’t surprise me to see future runs of the MDC Shay if Horizon sees possibilities for profit.
The MDC kits and the Keystone Shay/NWSL power train can both be built up into nice models, although they can be a bit fiddly to get running well. The Keystone is really more realistically-sized as a narrowgauge model. The book mentioned is well worth getting, as it has loads of tuning tricks and tips for the MDC, but which can also be applied to other locos…
HOn3 is set for an explosion of new RTR gear. In addition to the Blackstone K-27, MMI (an affiliate of PSC) will also be bringing in the K-27 in multiple versions. Blackstone also has RTR D&RGW 3000-series box and 5000-series stock cars this fall. M-T will be making more RTR cars based on the C&S underframe and then hopefully will move on to some other rolling stock.
Con-Cor’s Goose is also available RTR in HOn3. Pierce-Arrow versions of the Geese are rumored to be in the works.
Evene though they’re usually more of a challenge to build than standard gauge kits, the availability of HOn3 kits is wide and deep, although as many complain, it is often a bit too focused on Colorado. However, more non-Colorado prototypes are becoming available.
For anyone with questions about HOn3, the HOn3 Yahoo list is a goldmine of info. I’ve been a member for years.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HOn3/
While On30 has really gained adherents in the last decade, the major rub with it is the space that structures, etc take up in O scale. And the variety and diversity of items available in HO scale to supplement your HOn3 gear is unmatched – and generally less expensive than O scale items.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL