Looking at 009/H09 and N-gauge locomotives and rolling stock

As part of a job lot of 009/H09 models railway stuff I bought some time ago, I acquired a locomotive whose electric motor was irreparable and a couple of Wild West style carriages that had been slightly damaged (i.e. the bodies had small cracks in them). I decided to use them for wargaming, and after repairing the damage to the coaches with some polystyrene glue and short strips of Plasticard, I repainted the locomotive and carriages in a green-ish shade of feldgrau. the results looked like this:

I recently bought a KATO Pocket Line N-gauge locomotive and two carriages from an online stockist for about £65.00, which seemed a reasonable price to pay for a set that has a reputation for excellent reliability and build quality. Interestingly, the locomotive isn't powered ... but one of the carriages is! The set looks like this:

Looking at both sets of locomotives and carriages, I wondered whether there was a possibility that I could use the 009/H09 and N-gauge stuff together. Afterall, they both run on the same N-gauge KATO Unitrack even if they use different couplings.

First I compared the two locomotive ...

... and then I compared the carriages.

In the case of the locomotives, the 009/H09 one looked a lot bigger, but if I was to use it as a mainline locomotive and the small N-gauge one as a shunter, I think this would work. (I might have to modify the small loco's cab slightly, but that should not be too difficult.)

The same cannot be said of the carriages ... although I suspect that – with a little bit of work – the N-gauge ones could be modified.

To help me visualise what might or might not be possible, I then compared the two locomotive alongside a 15mm Essex Miniature figure and a 20mm Britannia Miniature figure. Firstly, I put the figures alongside the respective model locomotive that was closest in scale to it ...

... and then swapped them around.

The 009/H09 locomotive is 1:87th-scale and the N-gauge KATO Pocket Line one is 1:160th-scale. The 15mm figure is 1:100th-scale and the 20mm figure is 76th-scale. Please note that these scales are all approximate!

The 15mm figure looks 'right' alongside both locomotives and the 20mm figure looks 'right' next to the 009/H09 locomotive. As it is more likely that I'll be using these locomotives with my 15mm figures, this means that the 009/H09 one can be used as a mainline locomotive and the N-gauge one can be used as a local shunter ... just as I hoped earlier in this blog post. The couplings might need to be modified to make them compatible with each other, but I understand that this should not be an insurmountable problem.

---

I subsequently searched online for suggestions as to how I might be able to convert the N-gauge KATO Pocket Line set to 009/H09 ... and this is what I found:

Please click on the image to enlarge it.

Very interesting!