Hello - I have recently started building an HOm scale railroad that is roughly based on the MGB in Switzerland. My primary reason was that I could effectivly model working rack or cog trains in mountains and build some Alpine villages. I was wondering if anyone else has tried to tackle a model railroad in this scale and if so, what problems were encountered (short of the obvious difficulty in getting produts and translating German and the Metric system ) I have found a couple of hobby suppliers in the U.S. that handles some of the equipment and made some good contacts in Switzerland who can ship them, but I would like to talk to some other modellers in the U.S. who has tried this as I am feeling like the Lone Ranger and all alone. Ron
The actual scale is often refered to as HOn3.5 the spacing between the rails is something like 12mm, making it the same as TT scale. The big issue is the rack rail. The only company I have found that makes it is BEMO.
The m stands for metric. Thus HOm is 1 meter track width in HO, as compared to the 90 centimeters (= 3 feet) of customary US NG. Actually, it should be H0 (i.e. zero), but that got lost in the US. But if you want to look up something in Europe, it might help to try to enter H0 instead of HO. Bemo is not the only supplier of HOm/H0m models. There are others, but they have smaller selections, like D+R (Preview), or they produce brass models only. Which then makes them even more expensive. As for tracks, I am not that familiar with the choices, but Peco makes some at least, as well. As I am modeling HOn3 in Switzerland, I feel about equally like being a Lone Ranger here. There may be more suppliers here for HOn3 (as compared to HOm in the US), but their prices are rather steep, and the selection poor. But direct imports involve a lot of postage, thus eating into the "savings". Plus, there are taxes to be paid as well. The best option for me is to have someone bring the items as he/she comes anyway, or I take them along when I visit my son in the US.
