India / Far East

[jhb171achill]

Years ago, I travelled all round India and Java, chasing operational steam of course.

I have often tried to find any site (or models) dealing with Indian railways, in particular a metre gauge YP or YG class model, or anything steam era PJKA (Indonesia).

No joy. Any ideas?

[Galteemore]

May be worth an email to the Continental Modeller team at Peco. Probably the most informed UK source on what may exist in the model arena...

[Galteemore]

Or try this....https://www.irfca.org/faq/faq-model.html

[DiveController]

I suppose if you modeled 21mm track you'd certainly get away with the 1mm discrepancy that would be 22mm for the 5'6" Indian gauge.

Maybe someone would do 21mm if they could also sell it to all Indian modelers as a much smaller compromise than Irish OO modelers have been making for eons  

[minister_for_hardship]

Not quite Indian or Indonesian, but Asia and unusual. Thai railways.

Edited November 13, 2019 by minister_for_hardship

[Broithe]

1 hour ago, minister_for_hardship said:

Not quite Indian or Indonesian, but Asia and unusual. Thai railways.

I would counsel against having an eBay saved search for 'Thai models'...

[DiveController]

33 minutes ago, Broithe said:

I would counsel against having an eBay saved search for 'Thai models'...

Astronomers might also get into difficulty googling certain regions of spacetime with very high gravitational acceleration   

[spudfan]

Might be of some use

http://adityaminiaturetrainmodels.com/

https://www.decibelscalemodels.com/

[Mayner]

I think HO Scale (1:87) would be a better proposition than OO (1:76) for modelling Indian and South East Asian railways, which have more in common with Australian and South American practice and have some rtr support.

Frateschi https://www.frateschi.com.br/web/locomotivas/?lang=en produce a large range of relatively in-expensive South American rtr while Auscision https://www.australianmodeller.com.au/collections/auscision-models produce a more high end range of Australian rtr locos and stock. Both include a number of the standard Alco and General Motors and General Electric export locos used in India and South East Asia.

Although scratch building is probably necessary HO should be feasible as many broad and narrow gauge locos were large by British standards and followed modern practice with more in common with American than British design practice. Perhaps some one may produce a model of the Standard meter gauge 2-8-2 used in East Africa, India, and South East Asia (Malaya, Thailand, Burma.

On the question of gauge HOm is spot on for the meter feeder lines in India and the main line systems in South East Asia, and EM reasonably close for Irish/Australian 5'3" or Indian/South American broad gauge.  HOe would be fine for 2'6" gauge plantation  and secondary lines, many of which used a mixture of British,German and Japanese locos and rolling stock. O Scale (American or British) would probably be a better proposition for modelling 2' gauge lines like the Darjelling-Himalayan or the Gwalior Light Railway (199km)