I have been thinking of switching from HO to O scale for a long time now. I am a fan of the Great Northern and have several questions. I have modeled in Ho since my youth and so I have extensive knowledge in that scale but am relatively uninformed about O so your help would be appreciated.
1 How do I tell the difference between 2 rail and 3 rail engines in ebay auctions? Do some companies make both?
2 What is the minium radius for most O scale locomotives? What radius looks good (usually larger than min) with most locos and 40-50’ rolling stock?
I am assuming the grade rules that govern HO scale would apply to O scale as well?
4 Who makes good O scale switches and track for a reasonable price (similar to Peco in HO)?
I have a fairly sizable collection in HO. 40+ steam and diesels, and about 150 pieces of rolling stock and about 100 or so structures; a lot of them which are craftsman, some of which I have built interiors for. What would be the best way to sell them? Contact the local hobby shop (not in GN area) or sell on ebay by piece or by lot?
These are the questions that I can think of now, if there is any other info that you think would be helpful please feel free to respond.
Thanks for your assistance
Randy Johnson
Dallas Center Iowa
The easiest way to tell is to look for 3rd rail pickup rollers on the bottom of the engine. Most sellers, though, will note this in their description, or at least note whether or not something is two rail. Atlas and 3rd Rail make a two-rail version of almost every engine and piece of rolling stock they make. MTH has also made some two rail, as has Lionel. Most of the older brass importers were all two rail.
O-72(or 36" radius) is an absolute minimum for most scale pieces. Things will usually look better, though, if you have room to go with O-120, or 60" radius track.
I don’t have any experience with this, so I can’t really offer that much help.
Most will tell you that Atlas track is about the best you can get, although it’s a bit pricey($3-5 per section). Gargraves makes very affordable flex track with wooden ties, although their switches aren’t that good. Ross switches are some of the best you can get, and 100% compatible with Gargraves, but they’re expensive.
I’ll let someone more experienced in HO take care of this one.
Good choice, nothing wrong with HO but when you are 114 years old they seem pretty small, and the newer O gauge stuff is great, My reason for not going"O" is space and cost, you will find O more expensive, unless the prices have dropped in a while, good luck and enjoy.
I have a small question about O scale. Why are some of the locomotives have seperate front part (where the MU hoses, snowplow, etc are located and the steps are seperated from the body) are connected to the truck and some are the normal ones? Is it because of the types of 2 and 3 rail tracks? Oh yeah why are there 2 and 3 rail tracks? Just wondering here, thanks
randyaj, you should post this on the Classic Toy Trains Forum. That is where a lot of the O gaugers hang out including myself. While you are up there, stop in the Pot of Coffee. Hope to see you up there.
Atlas makes a great line of 2 rail track, but its going to be a bit of sticker shock when compared to HO. A switch they have a #4 & #6 along with a #5 wye run $60.00 list eBay about $40. Go to their web site its great. www.atlas.com.
Take all your HO spects curves, grades, and just double them. HO a wide radius would be 30in, so in O you would have to have a 60in. I have been looking at this same thing myself, what stops me is cost and space.
First hsin86.
The reason there seperate because at one time they were lionel or MTH. This would make it so that the loco could take very sharp corners without the loco derailing. This is easily fixed by screwing in that portion to the body and converting it over to standard O scale- 2 rail.
Randyaj
#1…On the truck underneath there is a electrical pick up pin, looks like a roller, set in the middle, for 3 rail. Usually on ebay they tell you wether the loco is 2 or 3 rail. MTH is now the main leader of 3 rail. 3 rail can be converted over to 2 rail. You can buy 2 rail trucks for lionel set ups. The pilot of the loco can be taken off and screwed directly to the frame of the loco as it is seperate. Companies like Weaver make both 2 and 3 rail items. MTH might do the same thing.
#2 I wouldn’t go less than a 30 inch radius for your 4 axle units and, If you wanted 6 axle units I wouldn’t go less than a 40 inch radius, just to give your locomotives room to turn.
#3 The grades are the same. They do not differ.
#4 Atlas turnouts are your best guess. I’m not sure since my dad models in proto 48 ( Proto 48 is the actual scale Four foot eight and a half not five foot) and his switches come from a special manufacturer.
#5 Sell everything seperately on ebay. I have found that in a group not all people want everything shown so the bids don’t go as high as seperately sold items. Do “NOT” go to a hobby shop to sell your stuff. They try to get everything for cheap. For a loco thats worth 500 dollars they might say, We will give you 150 dollars for it. There cheap! Don’t say I haven’t warned you!
Every gauge has great stuff nowadays. I think the first decision you need to make is 3 rail O or 2 rail. More available and less expensive in 3 rail. The downside, there are 3 rails. Two rail O takes up massive amounts of realestate. Three rail gets around this with swinging trucks. Download some free track planning software from www.atlaso.com and design a 2 and 3 rail layout just to get some ideas. One can adapt by scaling down in size for a 2 rail layout. Good luck
It Realy depend on how much room you have but i would go with nothing less that 0-72.
you can run ANYTHING on 0-72.
2 rail is DC and 3 rail is AC. MTH makes both.
lionel, MTH, williams, Atlas, 3rd Rail. k line. are the biggest out there. i would go with lionel for how simple it is but MTH has the DCS command complicated but you realy can do more with it. I recommend MTH.
pro/cons.
LIONEL : simple to use. high quality loco’s (my favorite the challenger) good sounds
CON: lack of opions in good loco’s. Price and the track sucks!
MTH: MORE realistic. plenty of loco’s to choose from. try to get only “proto Sound 2.0’s”
there very nice. great sound. great smoke units. nice snap track
CON hard to use.
3rd rail. Great looking locomotives. Lionel cammand good smoke, brass.
con: Price. fragile.
williams: Price. good looking.
Con. loco’s are very shiney. crapy smoke. no command
Atlas: price, Track, nice Cars.
Con: track is kinda hard to use but good looking. switches are CRAP!
K-Line: Nice cars.
Cons. loco’s have problems with there comand and pick ups.
2 rail. Pro: more real looking.
cons: PICE!!!
3rail: price and the options you have.
Cons: looks wierd with the therd rail.
Don’t abandon 2-rail too readily. Peco have flex track and switches for 2-rail O and there are plenty of locos and cars available. You may well have to get into kitbuilding and bashing though. It’s possible to build a very good 2-rail O layout - I recall seeing one in Continental Modeller magazine a few years ago that worked very well indeed, although there was not a lot of space for it.
Amazing as it may be to mr “rules” MTH are not the finest. This http://www.ehattons.com/StockDetail.aspx?SID=11699 would probably wipe the floor with most of their products. In one test it hauled 12 brass coaches in near silence without a trace of wheelspin.
There are significant differences between 3 rail and 2 rail. 3 rail maximum radius is 36", 2 rail minimum radius is 36". For 2 rail you can roughly double (1.8 times) what you are used to in HO for radius. One thing to remember is that the space required for an equivalent layout is 4 times that of HO, i.e. a 4x8 becomes an 8 x16 or 32 sq ft vs 128 sq ft.
3 rail engines are usally not insulated between the outer rails and have deep flanges so conversion is not simple. Some manufacturers such as Atlas have 2 and 3 rail version of engines and cars, but there is a lot less in 2 rail than 3 rail. Not all 3 rail is true O scale. O27 is undersized as are trains from Industrial rails. Other manufacturers sometimes undersize as well in the case of large engines.
If a larger scale is your desire check out S scale http://www.trainweb.org/crocon/sscale.html . I switched from HO to O, found it was too big for what I wanted to do in a layout and switched to S.
Another option is On30. This is O scale running on HO track. While this is narrow gauge Bachman is producing cars decorated for standard gauge protoypes. The actual car sizes are roughly the size of S scale (not close enough for the scale modeler, but some S Hi railers have swapped trucks on the cars). The advantage is that you can use tighter curves and the equipment costs less.
Enjoy
Paul
Paul,
Ok you’ve got my attention. Tell me more about S gauge. I have really liked both the availability of S and the cost comparison to O. What about availability of structures. I like the turntable kit from Bowser in S any experience with that?
Totaly confused as to what to do now
Randy
I left O scale too many expensive BAD experiences… Lionel NYC Passenger set $250 cars go around the curve and rips off ALL the wiring off the trucks on all cars, wiring too short, 16 weeks to get fixed; ZW transformer burns up all the circuit boards in MTH switches, 10 switches $450 ruined; MTH engine e-unit burns out in Santa FE engine first day engine only $120, MTH Wisconsin Central SD 40-2 engine doesn’t work out of box 12 weeks to fix $450 new, New transformer CW-80 Lionel doesn’t run most engines even of Lionel designed with wrong ac sine wave $100, can’t find track parts (uncouplers) except during certain times of year always out of stock, and the list just keeps on going and going and going. I feel Lionel and MTH get done screwing each other they won’t have any customers left, because they will get screwed too. Who needs it! If I pay several hundreds of dollars and keep getting crap its time to move on to something else like HO. I have not had that many bad experiences in HO!
S and O modelers,
I was hoping that you all would weigh in more! Lets here it stand up and tell me why I am not crazy to be thinking about such a big change?
Randy