Alright. I was practically born into HO; my Dad got me hooked at three. Throughout the years of off-and-on modelling I’ve flirted with HO, N, On3, and now Fn3. HO has been my main scale for many years (and will continue to be so), but large-scale stuff has really sucked me in the last little while. With Fn3 (1:20.3, 3 foot narrow gauge), my beloved geared locies are massive: a 55-ton three-truck shay is better than two feet long and weighs about ten pounds. Great for a fumble-fingered tweezer-junkie like me.
The number one thing that kept me out of the larger scales for years was the cost. Big locos=big money, right? Well, yes and no. Consider the following points.
-Each individual item is only slightly more expensive. In HO, the average loco is around $150-200 for a decent item. Not bad. In N, $100-150 (correct me on this if you have to; I haven’t looked at N in a while). In Fn3, decent locos can be had for $200-300 bucks; not so bad as one might have thought. MSRP is way higher of course, but who pays MSRP anymore?
-You need far fewer locos and rolling stock for large scale. N scale is (partly at least) about prototype-length trains. 100-150 cars at $10-$15 a piece (if you’re diligent) and you’re well past the thousand dollar mark for a single complete train. HO? Thirty cars maybe at $25-$40 each? That’s $750 - $1200 per train, not even looking at the locos. In large scale anything more than 8-10 cars starts to feel pretty enormous. The cars are $50-$100 each, so the difference from one scale to the next for the cost of a completed, realistic-seeming train is just about a wash.
-You need far less track in large scale. Unless you poop gold coins on your 1000-acre ranch, you’re not going to have ten scale miles of track to play with in large scale. If you avoid track power (which I’ll grant does price up the locos a fair bit), Gauge 1 track can be had for about $4 a foot. Pricier than HO to be sure, but on a per-foot basis, you’
Cost has not been my issue since I was a teenager. Not because I have lots to spend, but because I do a lot of scratch building which has a very low cost to time ratio. The only consideration that really limits me on scale is room since I’d do essentially the same style layout regardless of scale (small town branch line railroading). In that concept you only need one locomotive (or a couple if you want to change them out) and 10 - 15 cars. So yes, if I had the space, I’d move up out of HO quickly. Others may have differnet goals, but I do believe space is the more limiting factor than cost.
The biggest deciding factor in my choice was availability, versus what I wanted (a busy mainline, not a logger running two Shays and a handful of ‘not suitable for interchange’ cars.) HOj had available models of everything I was photographing at prices that wouldn’t break my rather modest budget. O scale Japanese prototype was four times more expensive per car, and N scale was not yet visible, somewhere over the horizon. As for larger than O scale - I am not related to either the Rockefelers or the Astors. (Bill Gates was still in grade school.)
Having made the decision, I moved quickly to fill in the blanks in my desired rosters. By 1970, I owned more than 90% of what I own today. As a result, I’m about as likely to move to Mars as I am to change scale/gauge/prototype.
If I had held off until 1985 I might have gone to N scale, which had grown exponentially and was about to pass HOj in popularity in Japan. N scale prices were a little less per unit, but the big draw would have been the ability to put more in less space.
Given my desire to run a LOT of trains (with a LOT of separate locomotives and cars) I would have needed a ten-acre lot and a megabuck to go to large scale. It’s not the cost of individual items of rolling stock. It’s the cost of fixed plant and the tax and security implications of the real estate required. The walled-in outdoor space I have available now would only handle about as big a layout as the HOj pike I had in a spare bedroom in Tennessee.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - in HOj)
I agree…While in N Scale I seen N cars two or three dollars less then their HO counter part.I could buy a Atlas N Scale GP 7 for $64.00 or a Atlas GP7 for $64.00-eBay prices.Track seems to be the same price.
It seems that G scale always has been, and perhaps always will be, more expensive because of fewer modelers in that scale than the ‘mainstream’ O, HO, S, and N scale modelers, fewer copies of each item are made, and sales are less.
I do know that I’m fortunate where space is concerned. Rich, you mentioned not wanting to reinvest after abandoning HO for S scale (gauge?); that concern isn’t necessary in my case. My HO layout is comfortably stuffed inside our furnace room (we call it the Growlery). It can stay there while the Fn3 stuff happily infests a backyard that currently hosts only overgrown trees and dog droppings. Space isn’t really much of a problem.
One thought about costs. I am new to the larger stuff, and wonder if the costs are artificially low right now. Is it normal to see a 1:20.3 shay that lists for $1300 sell on Trainworld for $400? I’ve paid more than that for sound-equipped HO steamers before.
For a given amount of space where you use all that you buy on the layout at the same time, it may actually be cheaper with the larger scale. That assumes you buy more track, buildings, rolling stock for the smaller scale.
OTOH, if you spread things out with the smaller scale so that you use about the same number of buildings, track, rolling stock then the smaller scales tend to be cheaper (except for Z).
Bachmann list prices seem to be a myth. I don’t recall ever seeing their stuff actually for sale at list. Their Fn3 steam locomotives typically start out around $700-900 and then drop to $500-600. $400 is on the low side and probably is a close out price.
BTW I don’t agree with the investment arguement. Stocks are an investment. Model trains are recreation. Do what brings enjoyment to you today. Whether changing scales, layouts, or continuing on with what you already have. Don’t over look having more than one scale at the same time.
Wow, Fn3, F scale? Have I been under a rock? Never heard of it! I know of the 1/8th scale, the ones you can ride on, but never heard of F. I guess I’ll have to search it out and see what it’s all about.
Mike.
EDIT: OK, I searched for, found, and looked at some web sites on F scale. Wow. The wifey thinks a garden railway is in our furture, I’ll have to look closer.
Both true, though in my case familiarity too often leads a case of the ho-hums. New endeavours keep me more involved.
The wonderful thing is that the main considerations of this hobby – money and space – are both negotiable in just about any scale. Cost is reducible; the more resourceful/patient/willing to haggle you are (or just plain cheap) the less this hobby is going to cost. The same applies to space; if you’re willing to live with fewer scale miles, you can fit a lot of trainy goodness into a pretty small space. Don’t have room for a 30’x40’ HO empire? If you stick to industrial switching rather than continuous run, your options for shoehorning a layout into a relatively small space are pretty numerous.
LION models in HO because that is where is where his equipment is. But, of course that is not so either. LION started in American Flyer back in the '50s, and graduated (if one could call it that—I’d love to have some clasic Flyer!) in the '60s, and there I have stayed. I sold my empire (if one could call it that) in the late '60s to buy a printing press. While in the Navy in the '70s I began to accumulate HO equipment again, and so nothing else ever crossed my ken.
Cost is a big factor, and for a monk living in a monastery it can be a prohibiting factor if one let it. But the cost of the trains is the nominal cost of building a railroad. Tables, Controls, Wires and time can be more prohibitive that dollars. Fortunately, we have a barn full of “repourposed lumber” sheds full of old cables and stacks of foam that used to be part of a roof system. LION has a space that used to be a classroom above the library.
I must tell you that when I asked for a train that Christmas long long ago, I imagined a wooden thing at the end of a string. Being a little old for that, they assumend I ment a real train set. The problem that I found with that train set, as nice as it was, was that it would only follow the tracks. A toy on a string could follow me where evere I wanted it to go : without limit. So let your imagination go, without limit. I built a full size representation of a GRS interlocking machine. I think it iw wonderful (it was built cheaply out of wood) and I only researched the operation of interlocking machines after I had built this one, so I was not constrained by aspects of reality. A working model board is next. But visitors see the trains and do not notice the GRS machine when it is pointed out to them, even if I am standing at it, pulling levers and dispatching trains.
It’s your imagination, You can confine it to a scale, or to a table, but give it free riegn and it will take you on a journey that you did not plan. And that will be the trip of
It appears to be less true today, but in the early 70s I chose N scale precisely because I knew it would cost less to do what I wanted. The reason was observable in a Walthers catalogue: the list of available castings. Never mind locos, much less locos that ran well. Never mind rolling stock, much less finely detailed rolling stock (Remember when Kadee introduced their first tank car?). But if you wanted detail parts to dress up an engine or outfit a structure or add signals and signs, it was years before some essential (and not so essential) castings began to be widely available–and many of those were frankly crude knockoffs.
The point is that I didn’t spend as much because, poor as I was, I owned about everything that was to be had. I wasn’t going to be adding much except over years of time. It was good discipline, and occasionally led to (usually disastrous) attempts to fabricate something myself. My concrete footings for water tanks, fashioned of Play-Doh, were a big hit. I didn’t look, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s still impossible to get metal castings of these ubiquitous features in N; they’re not all that common in HO. (Yet you can get fourteen different potbelly stoves.) So today it may well be that the cost differential isn’t all that great, but for me, at least, it once was.
When I was in 3 rail O in the '80s and '90s, I couldn’t afford the high end (any locomotive over $200 was high end to me). I stuck with the more common post-war and the O27 lines. I did have fun.
When I became serious about narrow gauge, I thought long and hard about O, On3, and On30. On3 was not going to happen unless it was converted On30. Scale O was like-wise unlikely, but 3 rail O and On30 was financially feasible. In the end, it was not finances but the space for structures and scenery that caused me to move HO and HOn3.
I still have the same financial limitations - very unlikely to buy a locomotive over $200 unless it is exactly what I am looking for. So my HOn3 engine roster has no Blackstone on it, and only a couple of unlettered Blackstone cars. Now by the time my FED engines and Keystone Shays are tricked up and tuned up, I’m looking at about $300 per - but it takes months to spend that money and put it to use. And I’m OK with that. I’ve satisfied myself that I can successfully enjoy model railroading in both HO and HOn3 on a $40/month budget, with a yearly splurge of about $150 additional.
Oh, what a nice can of worms. I think I’ll open it.
There is another cost factor between N and HO that you do not mention. Unless you are very serious about prototype accuracy (the test is, what does the word “Naperville” mean to you?) it is possible to be quite satisfied with the HO locomotives (although the DCC guys get fussy here), rolling stock, and structure kits of 20, 30, even 40 or more years ago, assuming it is in good shape and that changes to wheels or couplers if necessary are no big deal – not as collectors but for actual models for the layout. Indeed some very fussy modelers I know seek out structure kits of the 1960s. As for track, these days it needs to be nickel silver rail to have much resale interest, but there is stuff out there. That means it is possible to go to a swap meet or auction or “junk sale” and come away with very usable stuff for little cost.
By contrast, most N scalers that I know pretty much rule out N scale that is over 5 or 10 years old, for a variety of reasons, with certain exceptions of collector value. Rapido couplers pretty much make most used N unsalable at swap meets, again this is my observation. The consequence is that while there is tons of N scale stuff at swap meets and junk sales, it does not seem to offer a genuine purchase alternative for most N scalers, unless they are into re motoring, installing decoders, swapping out truck mounted couplers for new trucks and Micro Trains couplers body mounted, that sort of thing.
The consequence is that HO guys buy used and new, while N scalers buy mostly new. And yes I know this is a gross generalization and some of your best friends buy used N. I stand by my opinion.
Some of my friends have gotten into live steam and trains of that size, and don’t talk to them about cost!