British N-gauge prices - ouch.

[railsquid]

Now if someone takes a look at German coach pickup strips and if you compare it to Japanese axle tip pickups, you will notice that the German solution is from the early 70-ies and has way too high rolling resistance and it's still in use on new models.

 

Yup, looking at a new-ish model I picked up (DR Rekowagen from Brawa; PDF has an exploded parts diagram) that is indeed the case.

 

Hmm, and the DB coaches I got don't have any pickup strips at all (snap-in all-plastic bogies), which explains why they were comparatively cheap. And... neither do the relatively recent Graham Farish/Bachmann Mk1s. Not that lighting is a priority anyway, but...

[kvp]

First and foremost: Please do not run plastic wheels on metal track! They will get smeared all over your tracks, epecially into the turnouts. You should be able to find (or order from the net) the right replacement wheels for all coaches. This way, you can double the worth of your coaches (in money) and get rid of a serious problem.

 

The reason you can get cars with plastic wheels so cheap (around 4 to 12 euros) is that the right replacement wheels are hard to come by and they usually have fixed long couplers. Personally i've have lots of old stock, but all of them were or being switched to metal wheels. They roll nicer and don't get the tracks dirty. If you can, you should also replace the horizontal metal wipers with wheel side wipers, they are not as good as the japanese axle tip contacts, but at least they have lower friction than the big flat axle wipers. These are usually available as 3rd party accessories.

Edited November 4, 2014 by kvp

[railsquid]

Umm, I meant the bogie frames themselves are all plastic, no metal parts including screws etc., let alone pickups. The wheels are of course metal. I do have one ancient Tomix Blue Train coach which is very light which I run very occasionally for test purposes as it bounces very easily and shows up irregularities in the track, but I have enough bad memories of plastic wheels from my OO days not to ever want them again.

[Sean]

We model railroaders based in Japan are truly spoiled by the prices for stuff here.  My dad, also a model railroader, is visiting from Canada right now and I have taken him around to 3 of the shops here in Nagoya with me over the past week.  He couldn't believe the prices on most stuff, N-scale stuff here costs way less than in North America (the same does not hold true for HO stuff, but we both have N layouts so we kind of just ignored that pricing anomyly).

[railsquid]

I noticed in Germany that HO is slightly cheaper than N there, with a wider range; the same probably holds true for the UK. In both N-stuff tends to be hidden away towards the back of the shop.

 

The overseas Kato models are slightly better value for money, but they are still very much in the European price range, not the Japanese one. The current exchange rate doesn't help things much but even without it the difference is significant.

[Sean]

Yeah, my dad actually has a German N scale layout and I remember back in the 80s when we were putting it together often being frustrated by the wide range of stuff available in HO compared to N.  The catalogues for the big makers would be about 3/4 HO stuff.  We could only comfort ourselves with the thought that at least we weren't as bad off as people working in Z scale.

 

In North America HO is also more popular than N.  I think Japan must be the only country with a major model railroading industry where N is more popular, which makes sense given how small everyone's home is here. I've only casually glanced at the prices for HO stuff at my local Kid's Land and was surprised by the difference - it was close to 10 times what the equivalent N scale stuff was going for.

[railsquid]

Yeah, I wandered into a Katsumi store recently, which I didn't realise was HO only, took a polite look around then backed away very slowly and carefully.

 

I think even if I had the money and moreover the space, I'd still stick with N - the individual models may be fiddlier, but for me at least it makes creating more complex layouts more manageable.

[Martijn Meerts]

I noticed in Germany that HO is slightly cheaper than N there, with a wider range; the same probably holds true for the UK. In both N-stuff tends to be hidden away towards the back of the shop.

 

The overseas Kato models are slightly better value for money, but they are still very much in the European price range, not the Japanese one. The current exchange rate doesn't help things much but even without it the difference is significant.

 

Depends on how you compare. For brands that do both H0 and N, the H0 is usually more expensive. But there are many brands doing cheap H0 models. The good models of the better known brands (Marklin, Trix, Fleischmann, Brawa, Roco etc.) are definitely not cheaper than the average N-scale locomotive :)

 

Marklin at least does have very cheap locomotives as well, but they're toys rather than models.

[railsquid]

Ah OK, I wasn't really doing scientific comparisions, it just struck me that way after seeing a couple of locomotives both in N and HO (though I'm not sure if they were from the same manufacturer...)

[Martijn Meerts]

There's a lot of factors actually. Quite a bit of European N-scale stuff comes standard with decoder, and increasingly with sound modules as well. Those locomotives do tend to get rather expensive and can be more expensive than for example a standard (non-digital and/or non-sound) H0 locomotive. I have quite a lot of European N-scale, and I do have locomotives that were 250-300 euro (digital, but no sound). On the other hand, I also have H0 locomotives that were closer to the 600-700 euro range, but those include sound (of questionable quality ;))

[kvp]

Most european sellers offer analog with socket only, digital and digital with sound versions. Also, most N scale analog trains are cheaper than the H0 analog versions from the same manufacturer, but only slightly. The tricky part is that some manufacturers, like Maerklin can't really offer analog H0 variants, due to the fact that they already phased out their analog H0 line. For the same reason, there is no digital version in Z.

 

The price difference between an analog, a digital and a digital with sound locomotive is usually the base price of the decoder in question from the manufacturer's product range. However, it's often possible to find cheaper and/or better decoders from other manufacturers, so buying analog and adding the decoder by hand can be a better option.

 

ps: A good example for prices is the Kato made Nohab. It's more prototypical and cheaper to get the Kato version than the Minitrix one and it also runs better as an extra. I really wish they made more european rolling stock.