Modern TT

 With the house move now in prospect, I'm beginning to give serious consideration 120th scale. 

But in my heart, I feel it is going to fail commercially. And sadder still, I think the reasons lie at the heart of our hobby.

I joined one of the first 120th groups on Facebook set up after the Peco announcements. Like the swamps of RMweb it feels like half the membership represents the worst aspect of our hobby. You would almost think that some are diehard 3mm modellers who want the scale to fail.

You also get a vague feeling of "not invented here" as if a well-established scale gauge combination in other geographies is somehow totally new.

And then you have the people who make pronouncements about it who are clearly yet to model anything in the scale but are already "experts" which, being frank, I have to put up with quite enough in my professional life.

Then there is the trade.

Is it me or are PECO and Hornby pulling in very different directions? Now I could be wrong, that could even be a strength. Hornby's focus on the trainset world could lead people into Peco's more grown up approach aimed at modellers. To some degree that is what happened originally with TT, the failed trainset product turned into a rather good eco-system for 3mm scale modellers. I'll always have a soft spot for a 3mm scale layout, not least because TTn3 is a lovely combination.

I can't help thinking that for it to succeed we need a joined-up approach, whereas at the moment we have a scattergun one. Choose your era and part of the country and you'll find about 10% of the available products that fit, which represent about 2% of the period and era.

Take Minories, the classic CJF design, originally envisaged to exploit TT. I'm very, very tempted to try it out. I can use Peco track, the Hornby suburban coaches and.... an 08? A HST at a push?