Correct carriage length

[43133oh]

Hi all,

Over the last couple of years ive dabbled in some German railway stock. I’ve round that my rivarossi cars (in blue and green liveries) are longer and seem a slightly bigger scale to my Fleischmann cars (of what seems to be 80s schemes) being a lot shorter. The latters quality is amazing but when running they do look rather odd together. So who is the true length, And if I were to buy Roco or another brand, what length are they going to be closer to out of what I already have.

 

Thanks for any information!

 

Dan

[Nick Holliday]

You've opened a can of worms here. There are four parallel problems.

First of all, older products from some firms, including Rivarossi, Fleischmann and Trix, dating from the 1960's, were sometimes made to a larger scale than strict HO, which is 1:87. Typically they might be around 1:80, which will make them appear larger.

Secondly, the standard international coaches and silverfish were long beasties, and some companies such as Fleischmann and Marklin decided that a scale model would be too long for table top layouts, so they made them to 1:100 scale in length, whilst retaining HO scale for everything else. This either involved removing windows/bays entirely, or squashing them in to fit. These coaches will look much shorter than those to the correct length, such as, I think, ADE or Lilliput products.

Thirdly, compounding the confusion, some firms, such as Roco, have produced the same coaches in both reduced formats and true scale lengths, so you need to check descriptions or code numbers very carefully.

Finally, not all German coaches were built to this length, older styles being shorter, so correctly scaled versions of these types may look shorter than a correct scale modern one, but longer than the "shorty" versions!

Lastly, can I suggest you contact the moderators to remove your duplicate thread, otherwise those trying to help you a bit more than I can will get very frustrated if things are running in parallel?

[Joseph_Pestell]

Hello Dan,

 

It has long been standard practice for some European manufacturers to build their coaches to 1:100 length rather than 1:87. Roco have done both.

 

The longer ones are "right" as regards to scale but may not look so good if you have tight radius curves.

 

The real thing is usually 26m long so any coaches you have that are 26cm long are built to 1:100 length.

Edited December 11, 2017 by Joseph_Pestell

[Allegheny1600]

Hi Dan,

Just to add a little more to Nicks (and Josephs) posts above;

*most* international and *many* internal coaches over the past 40 or more years have been built to 26.4 metres length - in true H0 scale, this equates to 303mm long.

Some manufacturers used a scale of 1/100 to represent these long vehicles, giving models of 265mm long. While there are lots of these still on the secondhand market, I don't know if they would still be available new.

Other makers, notably Fleischmann and Trix/Märklin used a more acceptable scale of 1/93, giving models of 282mm long, these are still available new or s/h. Compounding this problem is the apparent variable swapping over of model ranges between Roco and Fleischmann since their merger.

As Nick says "a can of worms".

Should you buy more modern Roco or say, ACME - I'm sure you would be delighted with the quality of the 'better' coaches although your wallet may well suffer!

Cheers,

John.

 

PS For a long time, scale Roco coach boxes were emblazoned with "Exact 1/87" or similar to differentiate them from 'shorties' but do make sure the model fills the box!

 

PPS Welcome to the forum by the way!

Edited December 11, 2017 by Allegheny1600
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[bbishop]

And some of us model "Spur Null", which means a 26.4m coach is two foot long!

 

For information, Schürzenwagen (Skirted coaches) varied from 19.95m to 23.5m.

 

Bill

[doctor quinn]

*most* international and *many* internal coaches over the past 40 or more years have been built to 26.4 metres length - in true H0 scale, this equates to 303mm long.

Although DB standardised on UIC type X coaches that are 26.4m long, there is an alternative type Y standard with coaches are 24.5m long, for example DSB regionaltog stock.

 

Wikipedia has more detail https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UIC_passenger_coach_types

 

Nick