Roger Russell’s 3/8” Scale Portable Layout
Roger RussellDescription
Roger Russell’s ⅜ inch scale portable backwoods model railroad layout won Best of Show at the 1994 National Narrow Gauge Convention. A friend of his designed the construction, having the layout built on hollow core doors with legs that fold underneath. This makes it very very light and easy to get to conventions. Roger’s friends twisted his arm and encouraged him to bring the layout to a convention. Eventually he did and won 5 awards in one night including Best in Show, Dioramas, and more. What made Roger really glad, even more than the awards, was seeing the people enjoy looking at his layout.
Roger became interested in ⅜ inch Number 1 scale because of the amount of detail he could put into it. Number 1 differs from G scale by size, being about half the size. ⅜ inch is comfortable for him to build indoors, as it is right in between ¼ inch O scale and ½ inch G scale. There are some O and HO scale items on the backwoods and he has written articles on how to mix these scales. He says that deciding what scale to mix is as easy as knowing how many sizes of shovels a modeler has. When he looks at items to use on any scale, he looks at the items themselves and not the package. For more tips on designing your layout visit the Model Railroad Academy website.
The 3/8" scale portable layout, the Backwoods railroad won Best of Show at the 1994 National Narrow Gauge Convention. This thing's unbelievable, it's hard to describe it. It's fantastic. How did you get it to the convention? Well, a good friend of mine designed the construction, the basic construction of the layout. His name is John Lemon. And it's made on a hollow core door where the legs fold in underneath. It's very, very light. And we put it in the back of my pickup. At first, though, I was not going to bring the layout. And my friends here in Tucson really twisted my arm to bring it . So I brought it. And you won. How many awards did you win at that? Five awards in one night. Five awards in one night. That's phenomenal. Best of Show, Dioramas. Special caboose award. Jaks Industry award. The Japan award, Rail magazine in Tokyo. Nobody's ever done that, that I'm aware of. Won that many awards at the Narrow Gauge Convention. Right, right, well, I'm glad I brought it. But I'm really glad, more than the awards, what I enjoy is the people looking at it and smiling. I love to see the smile on their faces. You enjoy sharing it. Yes, yes. What got you interested in the 3/8" scale? It's number one gauge, number one scale modeling, I think. What got you interested in that? What I really liked was the amount of detail that I could put into it. Okay, so that's why you didn't do it HO, S, or O? Right, right. How does number one differ from G scale? It's about half the size. G scale is just, my personal opinion in like a 22-ton Shay or something, it's just a little too big for indoor. This scale is just, it's comfortable. You can build a whole layout the size of my O scale or S scale indoors and it'll be very comfortable. And you've got quarter-inch, which is O scale. You've got G scale, half inch. And this is right in between. It's like three-sixteenths, is the HO and O scale. Everything on the Backwoods layout is not all at the same scale. You've got some O scale items and HO scale. How do you know how to combine the different scales to get the effect that you want? Well, I've, on a number of articles I've even written, basically what I say is how many sizes of shovels do you have? Well, in my garage, I must have four sizes of shovels. So when I look at items to use in any scale, I look at the size. I don't look what's on the package. I look at the size and what I want to use the items for.
Amazing layout ..