Bachmann Europe have announced a new range of O Scale narrow gauge trains that they are calling NG7 scale. These are British O scale (7mm to the foot or 1/43.5) running on 16.5mm gauge track. Up to now this scale has been called O16.5 in the UK. Bachmann's announcement is the first ready-to-run in this scale, though kits etc have been available from other makers. Bachmann have announced Hunslet quarry locomotives in cab and cabless versions, two types of slate wagons and a coal wagon. Quarry Hunslets are very small 0-4-0 tank locomotives originally used in slate quarries in Wales and now preserved on tourist narrow gauge railways.

The scale is of course larger than ON30 though running on the same track, but given the small size of the prototypes they may look not too out of scale with ON30 equipment, Bachmann has created its own couplers for this range, however the locomotives use NEM 362 coupler pockets, so knuckle style couplers should be able to be fitted. Not sure about the wagons.

I realise that this range may not be of much interest to American modellers, but here in Australia narrow gauge railways often used a mixture od American, British and European equipment, so they could be useful.

In any event it is good to see that at least one branch of Bachmann sees a future for O scale narrow gauge models.

Hamish

Got one in mind

It's easy if you let a pro do it

How hard is it to add sound to a DCC ON BOARD ENGINE
AND CHANGE SOME OF THE SETTINGS

I am on vacation this week, I need to get down to the bench and start something. Thank you for sharing Ken.

Yeh.  EZ Command is just the thing in certain settings.

I bought the E-Z Command Plus and went back to my standard E-Z Command. I didn't like the "infinite" throttle. I didn't care for the additional function stuff because I just like the simplicity. Others want more settings to play with. Once I  got it, I asked myself what else I wanted change and couldn't think of anything. I already have the separate little CV programmer that I use for the speed stuff.

You asked for thoughts and comments.

I for one would like to see EZ COmmand evolve into something of a junior DYnamis, fully capable of being integrated into the main system if desired. As it stands you can't do this now. I feel it could be modified to provide much more functionality without sacrificing its simplicity. Other DCC manufacturers have done this, years ago. How much different would it be if acquiring a locomotive evolved from  "push a button 1 to 10" to "Push Loco key, and enter locomotive number, then LOCO again?" Because that is the difference between EZ COmmand and Digitrax Zephyr. EZ command has 10 possible addresses, Zephyr has almost 10k. I am using Zephyr for comparison because it is the system I am most familiar with. Others on the market are undoubtedly similar.

EZ COmmand vs Dynamis should not be an either/or decision. Rather Dynamis should be an upgrade of an existing EZ COmmand, or rather the two systems should be made compatable so that EZ Command could function as a throttle and/or booster in a Dynamis system. This is what others do. And the others are EZ Command's competition, not DYnamis.

Aside from the price of the 44597, the gaps are in the middle of the track. Or 4.5" away from the connected turnout, which is further than some people like. And on a reverse loop using 18in radius 'train set' track, there's also the problem of no place to put a 9" straight on the diverging loop. Meaning gaps would have to be created using another means anyway, as show here. Red bars indicate gap locations:



Len

I don't know about calling EZ Command a "standard" system, Ralph.  If you don't want to call it a training system I can understand that, but I myself think "economy" system might be a better term for such a stripped down system.  I'd think that what you call "advanced" is more akin to "standard" in the model railroad world as a whole since I suspect a lot more of them are powering DCC layouts than EZ Command.

None of this, of course is meant to denigrate EZ Command.  For what it is, it is very good, and got me past the DCC Intimidation Stage, which DCC can really do to a beginner.