On our most recent trip to Australia, I made sure to stop by Hearns Hobbies to see if they had an N-scale motive power in stock that we could add to our roster.

We used to live in Melbourne, but at the time I didn’t have enough room (or motivation) to build an N scale layout. I did pop in a few times when I lived there to browse and see what scales the Aussies model the most – HO and OO seem to be the winners, followed by N, then TT scale.

We weren’t disappointed – they had a good selection of N locomotives, with a mix of British and Australian prototypes, some of which had DCC and sound.

We opted for a Ghan NR class locomotive with DCC and sound. The Ghan is a tourist train that runs from Adelaide in South Australia, up to Darwin in the Northern Territory:

The trip is certainly on our bucket list, although tough to say whether we do the Ghan or the VIA Canadian first.

We’re pretty happy with our model – it compliments the BHP AC6000 we already had:

Unfortunately the passenger cars aren’t yet available, but they look like they may be similar to corrugated streamliner passenger cars, like what we had in the States. We may pick up some Santa Fe passenger cars in their stead, or alternatively pay the shipping fee to get the Ghan cars shipped once they’re available