I kinda thought that early N stuff came from MR and RMC plans, since if you look at those mags from the early 60's you'll find them there. the problem is that by 1964 the model mags had long since run the plans of the common locos and cars of the '30s and '40s, and was by then digging up plans of obscure or very sparsely produced engines and rolling stock. By a weird twist of fate that's how N scale got the early oddball stuff it had. Why nobody just picked up an HO model of a popular and common type and said "Hey, let's just shrink the dimensions of this down to N scale and use those plans" is something I will never understand.
