Blue Plastic Tracks

Well the other day I posted about 'G' scale Thomas locos and rolling stock etc...

Today we have some 'Atlas Edition' Minitrains. These little beauties are a minute 1/220th scale - so somewhere between 'N' and 'Z' gauge as I understand it (may even be 'Z' gauge but I'm too lazy to check as I'm writing this

Here's a couple of pictures of one, 'The Flying Scotsman', it comes with the loco, tender and two coaches as well as two pieces of track to display him on - they are only static display models. The level of detail on these is absolutely stunning bearing in mind their minute size, however although static the driving wheels/push-rods do actually work!! The second picture tries to put the size in context as I've included a standard rollerball pen to give a sense of scale. If the pen was laid down it would be total about the length of the piece of track, or in other words the loco would be about the length of half a pen

I got this and three other sets (The Golden Arrow, The Mallard, and a Series 0 Shinkansen) off eBay from a guy for £4.99 a set. I don't know if there are others, but I'm going to be keeping my eyes out for them as they are superbly made and detailed!!!

Enjoy...

ouo Tiny Flying Scotsman! I'd like to have one of these in my room.

Very detailed indeed. Have to wonder how they do that

I know they are incredible, I'll add some more pics of the other three sets when I get the time, some of those are even better believe it or not

Mind you I'm now looking forward to getting my ZZ Trains, even smaller 1/300 scale Shinkansen and not only that but motorised to boot!!!

Ok, I promised some more pics, here's one of each of the other three, if anything the Mallard is possibly even more detailed than the Flying Scotsman, right down to the rivets lol!

Anyway here we go, first the Mallard and yes just in front of it that is the 'pointer' nipple on my keyboard to give you another idea of the minute size of these;



Then the Golden Arrow;



Finally the Bullet Train;

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I really must hoover my keyboard, its disgusting lol!

Those are very cool. I don't think I have ever seen a train like the Golden Arrow before. Is that a British Train.

Hi Super,

Yes the Golden Arrow was a label given to a special express service just as the Flying Scotsman was. A big misconception is that the service was named after the train and indeed there is the Flying Scotsman loco and there was a Golden Arrow loco as well, but they were not the only locomotives to run the services of the same name. It's a very English thing and there were numerous special services such as those, the Brighton Belle, the list goes on and on.

But back to your original question yes it is an English design, called the 'Battle of Britain' class, that particular one is modelled as the original streamlined loco which was one of the English railway companies competitor to the 'A4' (aka Spencer) streamlined loco. See picture below;



The class was called 'Battle of Britain' as a lot of the engines were named after famous Battle of Britain and wartime characters such as Winston Churchill and airfields like Tangmere as well as the squadrons that flew out of them and which took part in the war. Later in their lives a lot of them had the streamlining removed so they looked more like the Flying Scotsman style, this was primarily a pragmatic decision as it was much easier to service the engines without all the streamlining in place which would need to be removed to carry out maintenance. Here's an example;



Just for the record there was one other famous type of streamlined locomotives which were the Coronation class (I'll post a pic of an example below of each type) these were typically named after English cities or famous lords or ladies, again these eventually lost their streamlining as well for the same reason as the Battle of Britain class.





Hope that helps?

Wow, very neat looking trains. Love the look of the Duchess of Hamilton, so glossy. Bet they all look great as a model. Such a great history and you know so much about it.

Yeah I've got Hornby 00 gauge models of all these types, ironically the old versions used to be made glossy however the current day 'high detail' models are produced in matt paint jobs. The rationale being that matt provides more detail and realism, personally I'd rather go for gloss like the preserved versions.

Now these have to be the tiniest realistic toy/model trains ever. Do you know anything in regards to who made them and where they are/were sold?

Dare say they could fit into a snow globe or something similar.