On Video: Building turnouts in N (N part 21)...

I've put together a rather longer than initially intended video about building turnouts. This isn't an instructional video, rather a 'warts and all' presentation of how I build only my second turnout, ever...

British Finescale market these 'Fast Tracks' kits, with all turnout blades and frog parts pre-formed and machined so that all that is required is a little cutting, bending and a touch with the soldering iron. I want to show you that these fine looking turnouts are within your reach, there isn't anything that a practicing modeller cannot achieve themselves here without a little practice and patience. I would wager you can produce a working turnout on your first attempt, I certainly did!

I hope the video goes to encourage you that perhaps N gauge offers more than we first think. Although it has benefits in terms of trains in the landscape and fitting more into a larger space, I think what is overlooked is how we can use it to shrink our cameo scenes whilst retaining a level of atmopshere previously impossible with coarse track and poorly detailed models. The quality of out of the box RTR models in this scale is now as good, if not better, than the Lima models I played with 25+ years ago as a child, yet they're tiny. The missing piece is still track, but this 'self assembly' option from British Finescale plugs the gap until Peco can be encouraged to offer something more realistic for the steam and branchline modeller in N gauge (namely bull head rail). Do let me know what you think and if you are able to stand a full 30+ minutes of me waffling on about this - I have other similar videos in mind, perhaps if this one goes well I will look to add those to my YouTube channel in time. For now though, thanks for reading, hopefully thanks for watching too! More soon...