[JasonB]

I decided to jump in and buy some train kits. 1/32 scale trains aren't that common, and most are prohibitively expensive, so I wanted to make sure that I grabbed these reasonably priced kits while they were available.

This is the little Baguley Drewery shunter which arrived just before Christmas, along with a couple of wagons. This is just taped together with sticky tape, so that I could get an idea of what it looked like.

       

Although it's relatively small for a loco, it's still 195mm long and 105mm tall, and with the the two wagons, I reckon the train will be about 550-600 mm long. Which means that in spite of having a fair amount of space to work with, the visible railway track run will only be about 10-15 times the length of the train. I'm glad that I decided to go for a small goods yard, as a passenger line with much bigger trains would have been unrealistic.

The kits themselves are made up of a mixture of laser cut mdf, 3d printed pieces, acrylic sheet, and various standard train components such as the motor, wheels, and gears. Assembly doesn't look too difficult, though the lack of location guides means it may be tricky to get things square and true. Most of the 3d components will need some work to make them presentable, but the other parts look ready to go.

At £95 for the loco, it's about a tenth of what you might expect to pay for many ready to run locos in this scale, so although it might not be the most intricately detailed model in the world, it seems like good value. For me it's ideal, as I reckon details can be added later, but the price made the difference between having a railway or not.

There was certainly no way I could justify paying £1,000 and upwards for a loco on what will essentially be a scenic item, so this seems like a great way for me to get started.