HOn30″ by Gerry Hopkins MMR
My main layout is based on the Great Northern Railway in Montana ( circa late 50’s ), but, I also enjoy modelling the Maine Two Footers. To get the two together I have set up a theme park on the side of a lake somewhere in Montana. This allows me to model the HOn30 section in what ever way keeps me happy.
The buildings on this section of the layout are either craftsman kits or scratchbuilt. Unfortunately there is not enough room for all the scratchbuilt buildings from the old NG layout, but some of them are used on the standard gauge section of the layout. There is still plenty of work to be done on the layout so forgive the unfinished, overly clean look.
The steam locos are Sango (#17 & #18), Flying Zoo (#10), and Car Works (#7). The 2 deasiesels are Life Like N Scale chassis with scratchbuilt bodies. The idea behind these is that they were originally cabooses (cabeese?) they had diesel engines added and traction motors on the axles (it’s my story and I am sticking with it). The locos all run on DCC and use TCS decoders, either T1’s or M1’s. All the locos are setup with a top speed of 20mph and run reliably for many hours.
Most of the rolling stock is scratchbuilt with just a few samples of kits – for variation!. They run on Micro Trains trucks with low profile wheels. I also use Micro Trains N scale couplers on all rolling stock.
The track is Micro Engineering Code 55 and all the turnouts are hand laid #6 with dead frogs. The semiphore signals have yet to be added.