bigger and better
My first train set was TT gauge (olde worlde, in-between 00 and N). I got jealous of another boy who had Hornby Dublo (bigger) so I got my parents to buy me some Hornby 0 gauge tinplate (even bigger). Personally, I like my trains to be big enough to rumble and clatter (and have proper three link or screw couplings!).
If your reaction to scenes such as this is “wow…I wish!” (like mine was) you may be at the start of a very long journey . . .
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These things cost a lot of money and take a lot of time . . . rather more of both than the average teenager has!
But every long journey begins with a small step!
If what wows you most is engines and engineering, you might want to check out a model engineering society. You will probably find that the attitude of model engineering societies varies:
You could visit some clubs or societies near you and find out where they are on this scale!
Peter’s Railway has an interesting page. Scroll down, but don't take their word for it, there may be others,
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If you get the opportunity to learn traditional engineering skills, take it! Such opportunities are rarer than hen’s teeth these days.
If you’re more wowed by the whole railway scene and are interested enough to research actual locations or periods in history, then there’s
Just don't ask what happened to gauge 2! Chances are that clubs and societies working in these scales are more likely to be towards the left-hand end of the like teenagers scale. Some clubs can find teenagers useful for jobs like bashing up coal or pulling weeds out of the track. That's how I started! You can always ask if there’s a junior section that offers more than this. If you're lucky enough to live near Hereford, the Hereford Society has a strong junior section that offers good training. The Newcastle club also has a good and active junior engineers section. If you are lucky enough to live near the Bluebell or Nene Valley railways, they have some very interesting plans for training through miniature lines. Check out the gyermekvasut page and follow developments via Train 2 Train. Meanwhile, the gauge 3 people claim that theirs is the "largest scenic modelling scale". Maybe they haven't heard of GL5!
5" and 7¼" are the serious ride-on gauges today
GL5 stands for "Ground Level Five". 5" gauge doesn't have to be about giving rides to kids in the park. It can be about serious railway operation and lines such as Ryedale in Yorkshire have signalling systems with a complexity that few, if any, standard gauge heritage lines could match. There's no formal youth training scheme that I know of (yet).
The 7¼” gauge society does have a well-developed three level proficiency scheme if you can find a club that offers it (Hereford does for one.)
