The Cascade Loop - a T gauge micro layout

[fshbwl]

Hi everyone,

my first post here, although I've been reading along for quite some time. My name is Chris, I'm based in Europe (one of the photos below will give you a hint in which country), and I caught the railroad modelling bug about three years ago when recovering together with my brothers from our parents attic a couple of boxes with our childhood Maerklin HO stuff. As HO is a bit too big for the space available right now, I discovered Z scale which is what I'm mostly dabbling in at the moment. But I also got interested in T Gauge and have just finished building a micro layout which I wanted to share with you.
 













The layout was inspired by this N scale layout from an old Arnold Rapido track plan collection from the 1960s. As the Tgauge choice for (continental) European rolling stock is rather limited (to say the least), I decided to transport the scenery into an American setting. My plan is, however, to now start building the whole thing in Z scale and clone it as closely as possible after this image.


Source: Arnold Rapido track-layouts 0020, 3rd ed. 1966,
reproduced with the kind permission of Hornby Hobbies (owners of the Rapido brand)



With a footprint of 30 x 20 centimeters it's tiny even by T gauge standards. Below a comparison with my Z scale micro layout. Makes Z look quite big...



I'll post a bit more about the built later.

Cheers for now,

Chris







 

[chessie system fan]

I love it!  The T bug is going to bite me one of these days.

Where did you get the railings on the bridge?

[MK]

Beautiful!  And welcome! 

[fshbwl]

@ Aaron and MK: thanks, glad you like it!

Aaron, the railings are from an etched brass railing set from Tgauge.com, one of the very few sellers of Tgauge stuff. They are based in Scotland and I’ve been ordering all my Tgauge stuff through them. Quick delivery without any issues here in Europe (although I don’t know about delivery times and customs for orders from the US).
   
Track, vehicles, figures, utility poles, spruce trees and tunnel portals are also all from Tgauge.com. Same for all of the rolling stock except for the EMD F7 A/B units. I got the shells for these from Shapeways (Jesse's T-Scale Models), painted them and applied some self-made inkjet decals. The buildings are N scale cardstock models from scalemodelplans.com which I scaled down to 1:450. The stone bridge was kitbashed from a tunnel portal kit and the road bridge and steel girder bridge were scratch built from polystyrene profiles.

Below some shots from the built, which took me about three months (including a few breaks), mostly in the evenings at the kitchen table and after the kids had gone to bed:

[Ed Kapuscinski]

This is really cool!

[peteski]

GREAT TINY layout!   Nice job!  I love miniatures!

[Albersala]

You've done a great job!

[John]

welkom bij de railwire - dat is uitstekend werk

[peteski]

welkom bij de railwire - dat is uitstekend werk

That sounds like something the Swedish Chef would say. 

[ednadolski]

Brilliant! Thanks for sharing! 

Ed

[ednadolski]

And we need a 'Best Of"  tag for this thread.

Ed

[rodsup9000]

 This is incredible. Amazing modeling at it's best in such a small scale.

[Dave V]

That's simply amazing.

[Mark W]

I automatically love it because it's T Gauge, but that might just be THE best river water modeling I've seen in any scale!

[nkalanaga]

How on Earth did you end up modeling the SP&S?  I grew up with it, in Pasco, Washington.  A lot of modelers in the eastern US have probably never heard of it.

I like it - and it looks like parts of the lower Columbia Gorge, SP&S country.