SCARM - A Simple Computer Aided Railway Modeller

I highly recommend this free software. SCARM is so easy to design your layouts using this software. I'm so impressed by how simple it is to use yet the range of things you can do with it. It even comes with a huge variety of various brand tracks of many gauges. I use Peco track, mainly flexi-track but also Set-Track. All the products are available and they can be placed within certain limits that makes sure you can actually get your trains around curves and points or even whether a building will fit that little spot.

Example HO scale layout from SCARM

Above is a HO (1:87) scale layout example directly from the SCARM website. I'll upload one of my own N-scale layout ideas in a future blog post.

The Gauge Issue

Railway gauge is a big issue, especially for an Australian. We Australians still have not figured out how to have a ‘standard gauge’ across our country. We’ve got three major incompatible gauges which has historically made rail transport across the country inefficient. This was because all the states originally only thought of themselves as individual colonies and selected the gauge solely on local considerations in isolation of what the other colonies were doing. Standardisation of new interstate lines has recently been adopted but there is still a huge variety of gauges.

State/Territory	Main Gauge	Other Major Gauges
New South Wales	Standard (UK)	Wide (connecting Vic)
Northern Territory	Standard (UK)
Queensland	Narrow (Cape)	Standard (connecting NSW) , 2ft (sugar cane trains)
South Australia	Wide (Irish)	Standard (connecting NSW and WA), Wide (connecting Vic)
Tasmania	Narrow (Cape)
Western Australia	Narrow (Cape)	Standard (connecting SA and in the Pilbara mining region)
Victoria	Wide (Irish)	Dual Standard/Wide (connecting SA and NSW)

Creating a model railway using any of the above gauges requires a lot of room… many kilometres in fact! So I’d best look at scaling down.

Some of most common railway modelling scales and gauges are:

Name of Gauge/scale	Gauge width	Scale
G and ‘1’	45mm	Numerous (G), 1:32 (1)
‘0’	32mm	1:43.5 (UK), 1:45(Europe), 1:48 (N. America)
’00’ and ‘H0’	16.5mm	1:76.2 (00), 1:87 (H0)
‘TT’	12mm	1:120
‘N’	9mm	1:148 (UK), 1:160 (most of the world)
‘Z’	6.5mm	1:220

Note, that there are many variations based on real life scales and gauges.

It given the range of gauges and scales it seems that model railways are as standard as the Australian Railway system! But, the gauge I like most is N. That is 9mm gauge which is 160 times smaller than standard gauge. The reasons for this are:

• The gauge corresponds to N-scale which is 1:160 (or 1:148) which are commonly used scales good for scenic model railways;
• N-gauge allows a lot to be packed into a small area including fairly tight radius curves;
• Because it is commonly used there are many manufacturers of 1:160 and 1:148 scale products meaning it may not be as necessary to scratch build too much stuff, especially locomotives.
• N-scale products are often available set up for either DC or DCC operations, with only HO and OO scales being better represented for DCC. This allows me to decide whether I want DC or DCC.
• I also already have two DC locomotives in British N-scale (1:148) as well as coaches, wagons and some scenic items that I’ve previously used for my small experimental DC layout.

Because of all the above points N-gauge is my choice of gauge. Now… that is figured out… where will I set my layout? Australia, UK, Germany, USA, Japan, Argentina or somewhere else? This will also help me to answer what scale I’m going to use.