Links

Here are a collection of useful links to European N scale modellers, featuring manufacturers, excellent personal/club sites and other such useful things.

In English:

• TOP LINK Austrian Railways Group (ARG) has a super quarterly journal in English, eGroup and several meetings/exhibitions each year.
• TOP LINK John Whitby's excellent Swiss trains website features the best Swiss N scale modelling I've seen, and lots of useful links. 
• TOP LINK Kopfbergbahn is an excellent Austrian N scale website both in English and Italian, with many corking photographs.
• Swiss Railways Society (SRS) produce a quarterly magazine about the real railway - reasonably useful.
• Rail Fan Europe has pictures and data on all the trains in current use in Europe, along with many historical ones.

In German:

• TOP LINK 1zu160 is an European N scale portal with news, all the new releases, reviews and lot of useful info such as lists of shops etc.
• TOP LINK Spurweite-n contains a database of almost every European N scale model produced. With pictures and reviews.
• Traffic is a very extensive but very complicated customisable train simulation with thousands of rolling stock gifs.

In Japanese:

• TOP LINK Modell Eisenbahn Klub is the main European H0 and N railway modelling group in Japan, their website has many inspirational pictures of their European layouts with plenty of Swiss and Austrian modelling!

In Danish:

• Jernhesten is an N scale website modelling the SBB and has a spectacular bridge!

European N Scale Manufacturers

• Fleischmann - DE
• Minitrix - DE
• Lemke (Kato, Hobbytrain) - DE
• Roco - AT

Are the top four in my opinion, although there are other more obscure manufacturers and some that have gone bankrupt - obviously dedicated to model before profit!  (If only UK manufacturers would go bankrupt more often!)  Perhaps Arnold's resurrection under under Hornby will prove fruitful...

EBay is also very useful for picking up out-of-production and second hand models and also models from now deceased companies.

Rendering & 3D

• TOP LINK Google SketchUp is a free, intuitive and powerful 3D design program.  Here is an engine shed I created using it in N scale:

• MLCad lego design program with part libraries from LDraw.
• POV-Ray is a free high-quality 3-D rendering tool.