I’ve set my heart on adding an HOn3 subisdiary railroad to my HO scale railroad (When its finished).
After purchasing an excellent Blackstone Undecorated K-27 2-8-2 with sound, I am hooked. I’m not really looking for more locomotives, just rolling stock.
I’m looking for nice, reasonably priced Passenger Cars, 3 coaches, 1 Combine, 1 Baggage, and about 20 to 25 assorted frieght cars.
Another locomotive of a different type would be nice, but I’ll worry about that later.
The Blackstone K-27 is a great machine with awesome sound that performs well at a very reasonable price. I suspect it will spark a lot of new interest in narrowgauge.
Blackstone will have runs of RTR Rio Grande 3000 series boxcars and 5000 series stock cars coming late this summer. The only other RTR rolling stock, besides factory-painted brass, generally available right now are the various Micro-Trains reefers and log cars. M-T has announced RTR C&S flat cars for late summer.
Besides those, if you want something in HOn3 other than building up and painting kits, you’ll need to turn to the used market. A search on the popular auction site using “HOn3” will yield a variety of items, but you’ll rarely find any great bargains when it comes to narrowgauge. There’s just too many people needing rolling stock and not having the time to build all the kits they’ve collected. RTR will slowly change that, but that’s the way it is right now.
BTW, if you haven’t already stumbled across it, the HOn3 Yahoo list is a great community.
Ah, yes, the British have a bunch of neat kits in HOn30, but that’s 9mm gauge, i.e. the same as N scale track.
HOn3 uses 10.5mm gauge track.
Some, but not all, of the HOn30 equipment can be adapted to HOn3 gauge by spreading the wheels on the axles out more. It’s important to differentiate between the two gauges to avoid confusion.
I have pre-ordered 3 of the Boxcars and 1 Stock Car. That’ll do me good for that. I’d like to get some Tank Cars, 1 or 2 will be fine. Flatcars, yes, I think about 5 or 6, Gondolas will also be needed. maybe 5 or 6 of those as well. If I can find a few steel hoppers I would refuse them either.
I found some Labelle Coach kits in one of the Bargin Bins at my LHS just now. It was 1 Coach and 1 Combine. I’l assemble them when I have the needed tools and an airbrush to paint it. I liked LGB’s DSP&P Coaches in Red, but I don’t know if the DSP&P ever had red coaches, but I think a slightly darker red will be fine.
If anyone else can give anymore info, that would be nice. Oh. I almost forgot. I’d like to get a Rotary Snowplow as well. If anybody knows of any of them, let me know.
A thought for the Passenger cars are Roundhouse Overtons. They are a little wide but look acceptable. Plus they come (perhaps I should say came) in a couple of Rio Grande Scemes plus Colorado and Southern. You generally can find them in swap meets too.
To convert them I used Roundhouse HOn3 Passenger trucks and 714 couplers. The trucks are out of production but there are PSC and other alternatives. Another better coupler alternative is to use #58 couplers in the existing box (These weren’t on the market when I did my C&S cars)
As for freight cars there are a lot of kits out there. Railline makes stock and boxcars, Rio Grande Models makes a lot of wood kits, Durango press has some kits. Grandt line makes a variety of kits, but they are often short production items. A tank car can be made out of one of the Roundhouse old timers and a scratch (or the upcoming MT) flatcar. IHC/AHM made an old timer tankcar that makes a decent car once you yank off the ugly handrails and slap HOn3 trucks under it. I’ve seen these at swap meets often.
I considered getting some HO cars and replacing the trucks with HOn3 Trucks. I’ll try that. I have an Old Roundhouse Overton somewhere in a box or if not there might be one at my LHS (probably not).
I’ll save the Labelle Kits for a day when I have nothing to do.
Greetings.Two years ago I built a MDC 2-8-0 and am starting to build a branchline. The engine runs great,just laid six feet of flex track and turned the power on.Think I will use it to haul ore and passangers from a mine to the HO mainline.I have years of back issues of N.G.& S.L. Magazine for inspiration,I might look at Caboose Hobbies selection of cars .MDC cars would be a good starting point also. What would be a good KD coupler for HOn3 cars ? Joe
There are a few options for hoppers. First, there are kits for the EBT hoppers available from Funaro and Camerlengo (#5102). Westerfield produced what they call “Fishbelly Ore Cars” (#3450) as used on a number of iron ore RRs, Great Northern and Yosemite Valley. This is a standard gauge model, but of an older prototype that will accept a pair of narrow gauge trucks and look at home. Both of thesekits are primarily resin castings. Trout Creek offers a 2-in-1 kit for 20’ ore cars (#3860). This is a wood kit.
You can maybe made the MDC Roundhouse Overton Cars Narrower by pressing the H0 Wheels onto the Axle Narrower, that works well but you need to look onto the bottomside of the Passengercar’s Carbase, there are two molded beams nearby the the Coupler Pocket which needed to be filed away, then the trucks will run better through any sharp curves. If you don’t file the beams away your wheelflanges will rub onto it and it would be the cause of any derailment.
For using Freight Cars, why not using Tichytrain Freight Car Kits, these Kits are based onto Steam Era Oldtime Desighns of the Originals, the Trucks can be removed and easily changed with Kadee H0n3 Trucks.
I am owning one MDC 2-8-0 H0n3 Consolidation and it works very well using a little wider Track Gauge of H0m (12 mm or TT-Gauge). I am based in Germany and I don’t have any chance to get here any Dualgauge Track from Shinohara or Micro Engineering easily, I need to use the European Dualgauge of maybe H0/H0n30 or H0/H0m.
To Run H0n3 equipment onto HOn30 gauge track it needed any conversations before running it, sometimes to make the wheel narrower, by pressing the wheel disks together onto ther axle, that practise works well by rolling stuff but not at locomotives, sometimes there is not any space to fit narrower wheels to it.
To work H0n3 equipment onto H0m track, it will be no problem for the most Locomotieves but for the rolling stock, so you need to remove the H0n3 trucks and change it with H0m Trucks or even change the wheelsets if the Truck’s Frame will be wide enough in their dimensions to hold wider gauge Wheelsets, better you will change wheelsets from regulary H0 Equipment to work H0m wheels inside it.
At the Moment, I work three subsidary RR’s to my H0 Layout.
One Industrial Copper Mining RR in H0n3 with Dualgauge of H0/H0n3 at the Junktion Station.
One Industrial & Harbour RR in H0e (H0n30 or 00-9) with H0/H0n30 Dualgauge Track at the Junction Station.