Monday, August 22, 2011

A little 009 project

009 Train

When I first saw the Minitrains HO scale narrow gauge pack, I knew it had great project potential. A loco and 10 wagons for £100 - bargain. Add a bit of track and some sort of controller and you have everything required for a small layout, for less than the price of many OO locos.

A little arm twisting saw me liberate the sample pack supplied to Hornby mag for review with the intention of building a layout for the magazine. This is a rather larger project than the ones I normally tackle, a new scale/gauge combo for the magazine too.

First up I needed to work out just how big a project I was looking at. My hope was that I could be thinking along the lines of a pizza box style layout - a circular track that takes up very little space. A purchase of a couple of lengths of 009 track from Classic Train & Bus, who amazingly had this and a point in stock, saw me testing.

009 Train testGradually a length of flexi was bent until it was a u-shape of under 10 inches diameter. Despite the curvature the little loco ran happily and the wagons seemed inclined to stay coupled up so this looked positive. In my head a 2 foot square board sounded goo and this proved I could happily get the train around it.

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