Welcome to Heather Cottages

[Emma Jane]

Hello,

What a lovely idea of a forum, nice to be able to chat to everybody with greater ease.

I am currently obsessed with these little Metcalfe N gauge cardboard kits (almost 144th scale) and I am working on some dioramas using them as a backdrop for 144th scale vehicles.

These are Heather Cottages in summer and autumn, based on cottages I knew growing up in Cumbria.

The garden plants are from Busch and Tasma. The Heather plants were some premade tufts kindly gifted by Huw at Telford last year that inspired the whole build. They sit on coffee mug cork coasters.

Probably going to start on the village school next.

If anyone can recommend some 144th scale animals, those would be great.

[MikeV]

Hi Emma

These are brilliant - and of course exactly what the SIG is about ....diversity of subject.

Echo Emma's request for animals. I fancy an 'abandoned' diorama with sheep grazing around a rusting (......subject to be confirmed....) I'm fairly certain my local railway shop has N gauge animals but there are two 'N gauges' one near as dammit and the other quite a long way off..........I don't think the EU ever got round to standardising Model railway gauges!

Mike

[Tim R-T-C]

British N Gauge is 1/148 so within margin of error for this SIG I hope! (Escpecially since many models sold as 144th do scale somewhat larger or smaller when closely examined).

European/US N gauge is 1/160, including most of the otherwise excellent Presier figures. (I think some Japanese N gauge is 1/150?)

I think the difference in scale is for the same reason British OO gauge is 1/76 while International HO gauge is 1/87 - the British locomotives are prototypically smaller than their foreign cousins and it was hard to fit motors in.