Train on the Paddington movie

[joshralph]

Hello everyone, this is my first post, I hope this is aloud.

 

My name is Josh and I live in Tasmania, Australia. My daughter fell in love with the idea of a train to bring her breakfast after watching the Paddington movie. Our local model shops only sell up to HO scale, and wont touch the G gauge stuff, and now I find myself on this forum, all I can say is WOW, love the photos and builds. Im after a similar set up as below, Sounds and steam and obviously ill need to custom build the carriages to suit. This will be an indoor layout that goes from room to room. 

 

Does anyone have any recommendations on where to start, and which website is best to purchase from? Ill need everything from Locomotive to track. How exciting, ill keep you all posted throughout the build

 

Kind regards josh

[Rayman4449]

Hi Josh and welcome.

 

That engine kind of looks like an Aristocraft Pacific.

 

I think a lot of dealers dont want to deal with G scale except for selling it because it takes up so much room which is in short supply in the average hobby store and more importantly because it's such a small market.  As far as where to buy, it depends on what you are wanting to go with.  For MTH I'm actually a dealer myself.  For USA Trains I buy all that direct from USA Trains at www.charlesro.com.  For track it depends, I use and recommend stainless steel rail so I would go with either HR Trains SS rail (located in Florida where you buy direct) or go with AML (which will be cheaper).  Aristocraft made SS track but they are out of business.  For Bachmann may want to hunt around, Trainworld would be one to consider.  

 

G scale is a great scale to go in, you cant beat the wow factor

[blid]

Hi Josh and welcome to the forum.

What a great idea. I hope you will follow it thru. Unfortunately others with similar ideas have sooner or later realized how much space is required, especially for the curves.

I suggest that you start with a track planning program. There are free programs available for download like SCARM, http://www.scarm.info. Draw your rooms and try to fit the tracks where you want them. Even if the program doesn’t have the tracks of your choice the same diameter/radius curves will occupy the same space.  Tighter curves means smaller types of engines to choose from.