King of the Rails

As mentioned yesterday a new locomotive has arrived for the Trainbarn.  It's an MTH Railking Gauge 1 Santa Fe F-7a diesel locomotive.  This is a little different to the 'normal' items that I seek out for my Toy Train collection, but long-term readers of this blog will recall that one of the displays that I'm planning is to have the same loco (Santa Fe F-7) in all the common model railroading scales.  This will hopefully help to unravel the mysteries of scale and gauge for visitors.


Interestingly, this idea was also adopted by the fantastic California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento.  Not that it matters, but I'm claiming to be the originator of this concept, although that's a long story!!

They're missing two sizes which I have- TT, between N and HO, and now Gauge 1, between O and G, however I'm still missing the two common sizes O and S.  It's a wonderful display, and I'm sure it's very popular.


Anyway, my new Gauge 1 loco is absolutely amazing.  It's the first loco that I've ever had with modern electronics and sound.  I obviously bought it just for static display, but it is so much fun to operate!!  It runs on 45mm/1.75" gauge track and is the correct scale for this gauge at 1/32.  The photo below shows this new loco (front) next to my LGB G scale F-7 which very confusingly runs on the same gauge track (45mm/1.75") but is much bigger, being an incorrect scale for the gauge.  It's designed for operation in the garden and is sized to match other garden trains.  G scale (again very confusingly ) can be anything between 1/20.3 to 1/29 scale, and the LGB loco is about 1/26.

So, that was really exciting- discovering what this Gauge 1 loco can do, although I haven't got enough track to really give it a good run.  At the moment it's set up on our lounge-room floor!