What I love about N Scale

[Mike Madonna]

A bit late to this party (as usual). This is a great photo, and shows off one of N Scale’s best attributes.

Ironically, I am strongly considering selling off my fleet of 85’+ cars and associated six-axle power…

There are many factors for this decision, but one of them is aesthetics. I planned my layout for era-swapping between the Erie / DL&W in 1952, and the EL in 1972, and have been accumulating a roster for each era.  But the layout was built to support steam-diesel transition era scenery with a double-track main and features local freight switching. My staging yard tracks were designed for a train of thirty 40’ freight cars, an A-B-A set of F units and a caboose to orbit the layout while the local does its thing.  The length of the train looks “right” on the layout.  But when I replace that train with a staging-length train of 1972 equipment, those two SD45’s are only hauling fourteen or fifteen 85’ cars.  Grossly overpowered and looks “wrong” to me. And 1972 local freight switching was only a shadow of what was there in 1952. As much as I am enamored with the UPS piggyback trains of the EL and the colorful Dereco era, I have more ‘fun’ switching cars on the peddler freights.

So I am seriously considering going “all in” on the pre-merger DL&W and Erie.  If I do, there will be a fair amount of EL items and pre-Conrail rolling stock for sale at Altoona in September...



Ron

Ron,
As Mr. Miyagi might say, "Ah, focus Ronaldson, focus" 
For me, sticking to a specific  "timeframe" (March/April, 1953) as made it less complicated to model the SP. Mind you, I said "less complicated", NOT easier LOL. Look forward to seeing you in Altoona!

[EJN]

And prototypical couplers that operate flawlessly even when intermixed between brands..

Photo from Fifer Hobby

What, no Bachmann boxing glove?

[Missaberoad]

What, no Bachmann boxing glove?

It would require its own image... in large format!   

[peteski]

What, no Bachmann boxing glove?

No, that review was done before Bachmann, Scale Trains, Hornby/Arnold and TSC came out. And of course before the more recent couplers.

[atsf_arizona]

What I love about N scale:

That you can get a lot more N scale Santa Fe locomotives into the same space (foreground locos), than you can in HO (background locos)!



This photo is from an visit to Nor-Cal Free-Mo Labor Day 2011 meet: https://pbase.com/atsf_arizona/norcalfreemo_labor_day_2011&page=2   

[OldEastRR]

To be fair, they didn't cram as many HO locos as possible on the upper shelf. Still, point taken. But HO locos have so much air space inside you can add a decoder, big speaker, animation unit (to make the engineer wave), smoke unit, random cut-out circuit, (so the loco suddenly has a :breakdown" during an ops session), coupler actuators  .... and STILL able to cram more weights into it.  You can't put a value on THAT.

However, N scale is the best.