Is it OO or 00 gauge?

[Nearholmer]

What does the ‘e’ in H0e stand for? Engspur?

 

I know I knew once, but I’ve forgotten!

Edited March 12, 2018 by Nearholmer

[MarkSG]

What does the ‘e’ in H0e stand for? Engspur?

 

I know I knew once, but I’ve forgotten!

 

It comes from Egger-Bahn, the first commercial manufacturer of models in that scale/gauge combination. http://www.egger-bahn.de/english/index.htm

[Pacific231G]

What does the ‘e’ in H0e stand for? Engspur?

 

I know I knew once, but I’ve forgotten!

I'd always assumed it referred originally to Eggerbahn rather as LGB gave us G gauge but delving a bit deeper I'm not so sure.  Looking at MOROP's NEM010 in French and German it seems if anything  to stand for "étroite" i.e. narrow in French where voie etroite - narrow gauge- usually refers to gauges below metre gauge. In the German version of NEM0101 there is no reference to a word beginning with e.

 

Egger-Bahn introduced models with a very nominal scale of 1:87 and 9mm gauge track in 1963 just a year after Arnold introduced N gauge as a commercial range.  Egger-Bahn was broken up in 1967 and the tooling was bought by Jouef who produced a rather cruder version of it. I did have some of it - though I'm not sure whether it was original Eggerbahn or Jouef's  "VE" (voie étroite) version- and it was rather toylike. Fortunately Lilliput came in with much better H0e scale models based originally on Austrian 760mm gauge prototypes and these were followed by others.

I'm not sure when or by whom the actual designation H0e was first used. It may have derived from Eggerbahn but I don't think it ever appeared in Egger-Bahn's own advertising nor in Jouef's till their brief re-introduction of it  in the mid 1980s. It did appear on Roco and Lilliput's advertising but I'm not sure from when.  .

Edited March 13, 2018 by Pacific231G

[BernardTPM]

H0e usually represents gauges around 750mm, but has been used for overscale models of 500mm and 600mm prototypes (some perhaps bigger than 1:64 scale!). More recently there have been H0f models on 6.5mm track (feldbahn) for the narrower gauges while the bigger Metre gauge stock on 12mm track is H0m.

In real life there's such a variety of possible gauges that there's bound to bit a bit of approximation. 2' 6" (762mm) in H0 is also called H0n30 for American prototypes, but in effect it's much the same as H0e. 9mm gauge in H0 scale is actually 784mm (to the nearest mm). There are a few lines in Germany and Poland that had a 785mm gauge.

[Nearholmer]

Hmmm ...... etroite in an otherwise German scheme? I suppose it might be, but I checked later yesterday evening, and some German sources do, indeed, use "engspur". But, that might be a 'back fit' to cover the embarrassment of a French original.

 

I've got a small biscuit-tin containing the best of my 1960s Eggerbahn, Jouef, and Minitrains, and somewhere I've got a very early Eggerbahn catalogue, but, as you say, I don't think it uses the term HOe ...... if I can find it, I will check.

 

Incidentally, these trains have got a lot smaller over the past fifty years; they were definitely much bigger when I first had them.

[Jol Wilkinson]

To my mind, "H0" (or HO) describes a scale. Usually 1:87, sometimes 1:80 or 1:82. But essentially a scale, where the gauge is appended as an annotation if it's something other than standard gauge (H0b5.3, H0n2.5, H0e). Whereas, "OO" or "00" describes a combination of scale and gauge in a very specific way.

 

 

- Richard.

If H0 can be three different scales, so how can it be "a" scale. With a variety of scales and gauges it would surely be a grouping of (European) modelling standards, within which, as you pointed out, there are a variety of scale/gauge variations each needing its own identifier.

[47137]

If H0 can be three different scales, so how can it be "a" scale. With a variety of scales and gauges it would surely be a grouping of (European) modelling standards, within which, as you pointed out, there are a variety of scale/gauge variations each needing its own identifier.

 

I'm unsure whether your first sentence is a question, but by "a" scale I mean the particular scale ratio in use, and also (reading along my sentence) a simple ratio rather than a combination of ratio and gauge. H0 has different scales in different locales, e.g. Japan 1:80, Europe 1:87, and I think it's reasonable to accept the designation (be it H0 or HO, however it is written) has a specific and singular meaning when used in context.

 

H0 is used worldwide, and it would be wrong to read the European designations as comprehensive.

 

- Richard.

[47137]

Six pages in - we have the answer................

 

Phew!

 

Cheers,

Mick

Not yet.

 

I've been looking through a copy of the Railway Modeller from 1954, and every mention gives the two letter Os written like this: "OO" gauge (with double quote marks).

This is consistent in the articles and in the advertisements. So if OO is a corruption of 00, we've been using it for a long time.

 

Incidentally this was in the days when we still used punctuation marks to the full, so the associated scale is written 4 mm. scale, and professional writers addressed their audience as the reader and not the shambolic 'we' or the over-familiar 'you' so much in vogue in magazines today.

 

- Richard.

Edited March 13, 2018 by 47137

[Pacific231G]

If H0 can be three different scales, so how can it be "a" scale. With a variety of scales and gauges it would surely be a grouping of (European) modelling standards, within which, as you pointed out, there are a variety of scale/gauge variations each needing its own identifier.

But H0 isn't three different scales. H0 as we now know it was developed in Britain in the mid 1920s by members of the Wimbledon MRC as 3.5mm/ft on 16mm (later 16.5mm gauge) and eventually adopted by almost the whole world but not by the country that invented it 

 

It was agreed back in 1952 at the Ruedesheim Conference of European Model Railways Associations that H0 scale would be 1:87 and its gauge 16.5mm..Before that some French modellers had used 1:86 scale (and often referred to it as 00) and the German delegation argued for a compromise scale of  1:80 (which  would have lumbered everyone with similar problems to British 00) but 1:87 (3.5mm/ft to the nearest integer) was agreed and so it has remained.The NMRA had already defined HO some years earlier as had the BRMSB with the same gauge and scale* .

 

That conference became an annual affair and a couple of years later it agreed to set up MOROP as an international standards body registered in Switzerland. It was, and AFAIK  still is, owned by a number of Europe's national model railway associations so it's not true to decribed MOROP's NEMs as a "German system".

 

Unlike OO, H0 can be a scale AND a gauge because 16.5mm multiplied by 87 is 1435.5mm which, within full size engineering tolerances  is precisely correct*. The same is generally true of TT and N where 12mm gauge at 1:120 and 9mm gauge at 1:160 scale both give a gauge of 1440mm.

 

There have been models described as H0 but built to a different scale most notably by Rivarossi whose European prototype models were for a time to 1:80 rather than 1:87 scale (though their US prototypes that I remember lusting after as a youngster were to proper H0 scale)  Some "H0" building kits, such as those produced by Jouef, were also closer to 1:100 scale but those are departures from the accepted scale not different flavours of H0. 

 

Japan is a slightly odd case (as is Britain) where 1:80 and 1:187 scale are both used (as 1:150 and 1:160 are for N) but I suspect that was more to do with fitting mechanisms into the smaller bodies of 3ft 6in (1067mm) gauge trains even though in either scale the 16.5mm track gauge was far too wide. It's not clear why the Japanese didn't more widely adopt 1:87 scale with 12mm gauge track which is actually closer to 3ft 6in gauge than it is to the metre gauge it's normally used for as H0m. In any case with very little space in most Japanese homes H0 or its local equivalents is far less popular than N .

 

 

*There is a tiny variation between the European H0 scale of 1:87 agreed by MOROP and the 1:87.1  adopted by the NMRA which is 3.5mm/ft to one decimal place rather than rounded down to an integer. In practice this difference is negligible and I suspect totally ignored by manufacturers.

Edited March 13, 2018 by Pacific231G

[luckymucklebackit]

I'd always assumed it referred originally to Eggerbahn rather as LGB gave us G gauge but delving a bit deeper I'm not so sure.  ....  .

 

But LGB means something completely different these days (especially when mixed with "T")

[Nearholmer]

Maybe engspur is simply the translation of voie etroite, the 'e' conveniently working in both languages.

 

SWMBO has better German and French than me, and tells me that 'schmal', as in schmalspur actually means 'slender', not narrow, while 'eng' implies tight-fitting, as in a tight-fitting dress, but can also mean 'narrow', and schlank, which is sometimes given as narrow, actually means 'slim'.

 

I'm only a bit confused!

Edited March 13, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Allegheny1600]

If H0 can be three different scales, so how can it be "a" scale. With a variety of scales and gauges it would surely be a grouping of (European) modelling standards, within which, as you pointed out, there are a variety of scale/gauge variations each needing its own identifier.

To add to David (Pacific231G)'s post above,

It is necessary to understand some history of this rather complicated subject.

"H0" scale is quite an old scale, here is the oldest "small scale" model I have encountered: https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/collections-online/models/item/1996-2078?&apiurl=aHR0cHM6Ly9hcGkubHRtdXNldW0uY28udWsvbW9kZWxzP3Nob3J0PTEmc2tpcD0xNDQmbGltaXQ9NDg=&searchpage=

Probably made in Germany to commemorate the opening of the Central London Railway in 1900, it's "only" a push along tinplate model but it was a start for small-scale modelling although it was really "only" a toy.

It may be that non-other than Bassett-Lowke/H. Greenly were involved in the design work but they would have subcontracted this work over to Nuremberg as that was the pre-eminent place in the world for toy making. Apparently, Bassett-Lowke said that he had the idea for producing half 0 gauge model trains in the 1900's but unfortunately the "great war" got in the way after 1914.

The Germans did start making "half 0 gauge" trains in 1922, I don't know exactly what scale ratio they chose. However, the usual German 0 gauge scale was and still is 1/45, which may explain why some older "H0" scale models were made to 1/90th scale, along with 1/80th, 1/82 and so on. As an aside, the usual "American 0 gauge" is 1/48th scale so the American H0 may well have ended up as 1/96th scale!

Thankfully, as mentioned above, Stewart Reidpath, A.R. Walkley and M. Longridge in around 1923/4 settled on 3.5mm/foot at 1/87th scale, which is, of course, half of British 0 gauges 1/43.5 and 7mm/foot.

So you see, H0 scale at 1/87 is a British innovation! It really is truly the "worldwide" scale, it is just a terrible shame that we British couldn't reconcile the difficulties of making a large outside valve gear steam locomotive work properly*, although looking at 00 products made up until at least the late 1950's - 00 models were not exactly "scale" either, never mind being undergauge, they still had wheels largely undersized and so terribly crude.

I've seen photos of Stewart Reidpath H0 British steam locos from the 1920's and they look at least as well detailed as the best of British from the fifties and sixties!

Sorry!

That's by the by but you cannot understand the hows and why's of "00" without understanding how small-scale modelling came to be.

And, just because people over the past century have become "lazy" and corrupt "00" into "OO", doesn't make it correct.

I'll get off my soapbox now!

John.

 

*Although we couldn't, the Koreans could: The Australian firm of Precision Scale Models commissioned a H0 scale model of "Flying Scotsman" in around 1994/5, by accounts, this works beautifully and doesn't need too large curves. (no, I haven't got one!!)

Edited March 14, 2018 by Allegheny1600

[newbryford]

I give up - I'm going to go Z gauge.

 

Or should that be z gauge.....................?

 

Cheers,

Mick

[Ron Ron Ron]

Zzzzzzzzzzzz !

[Nearholmer]

“The Germans did start making "half 0 gauge" trains in 1922, I don't know exactly what scale ratio they chose.”

 

This was Bing, in very close cooperation with Bassett-Lowke, with Greenly as consultant, all picking-up where they’d left off when war interfered. The scale, in so far as the trains were to scale, was 4mm/ft, and I think, but would need to check, that the gauge was nominally 16mm or 5/8”. There is a very good representative display at Brighton toymuseum, and layouts get operated at many TCS shows.

 

Copious detail here http://www.brightontoymuseum.co.uk/index/Category:Bing_Table_Railway

Edited March 14, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Pacific231G]

“The Germans did start making "half 0 gauge" trains in 1922, I don't know exactly what scale ratio they chose.”

 

This was Bing, in very close cooperation with Bassett-Lowke, with Greenly as consultant, all picking-up where they’d left off when war interfered. The scale, in so far as the trains were to scale, was 4mm/ft, and I think, but would need to check, that the gauge was nominally 16mm or 5/8”. There is a very good representative display at Brighton toymuseum, and layouts get operated at many TCS shows.

 

Copious detail here http://www.brightontoymuseum.co.uk/index/Category:Bing_Table_Railway

 

Hi Kevin

You are quite right to say that the gauge was initially specified as 5/8 inch or 16mm but I'll have to delve a bit to find out when modellers started to add the extra 0.5mm. In those days 3,2,1, 0 and 00 always referred to the gauge and were generally referred to as no. 1, no. 0 or no. 00 gauge etc.

 

I'd hazard a guess that the "scale" used by Bing in Germany for "half 0" was rather vague but Henry Greenly made a conscious decision to champion a scale of 4mm/ft for 00 gauge to allow for the  3.5mm wide tyres he considered necessary and stated very firmly his opinion that "the gauge is not the correct method of arriving at the scale". (It certainly wasn't for the locos he designed for the Ravenglass and RHDR) There does seem to have been an assumption on his part that most modellers would continue to rely on semi-portable track rather than laying it on baseboards and that 00 would be a table-top equivalent of 0 gauge with equally tight curves rather than a gauge for broader scale modelling  .

 

By 1925, when Model Railway News first appeared, the debate between those going with Greenly's 4mm/ft scale, especially Greenly himself, and those looking for scale models and going for 3.5mm/ft scale seems to already have been in progress. Both of course were 00 because that was the gauge.

 

Actual models using 00 gauge were still fairly rare and layouts featured were as likely to be gauge 1 as 0 gauge. In MRN's first year only eight actual models for 00 gauge appeared with photographs rather than just drawings and six of those, including a couple of layouts, were 3.5mm/ft. Only two were 4mm scale but a comment by Edward Beal does perhaps point to why 4mm/ft came to predominate by the early 1930s "The scale adopted for the designs is 3 1/2 mm but the maximum loading gauge has been adopted. This is due to the fact that that the standard electric mechanism (presumably the one supplied by Basset Lowke) is designed to suit the 4mm scale which Mr. Greenly has championed from the beginning. For practical purposes, however, in the writer's opinion there is nothnig to beat the "half 0 gauge" scale."

 

Beal himself eventually turned to 4mm/ft but several of the letters in the debate came from modellers in France where 3.5mm/ft was adopted.

Edited March 15, 2018 by Pacific231G

[Chris M]

I have a booklet from 1930 called “working model railways” written by John Davidson which refers to gauges as No.1 gauge, No. 0 gauge and also No. 00 gauge. So that’s a vote from the past for it being 00 rather than OO.

 

It also refers to No. 00 gauge as being to a scale of 3.5mm to the foot.

[Nearholmer]

There was a right royal row about what to call the scales/gauges in the 1920s, rumbling on until the early 1930s.

 

00 was the logical progression (think paint brush sizes) as half of 0, so 3.5mm/ft, but matters were complicated by the presence of 4mm/ft as used by Greenly. After much bickering, 00 became the 4mm/ft version, and H0 the 3.5mm/ft, but both designations were attempted for both scales before that point.

 

In the USA, 00 was used for 4mm/ft on 19mm gauge, as near as makes no difference to P4 (18.83mm) in gauge, and there were a few practitioners of that in GB too, but it never became a commercial gauge here.

[47137]

I suggest, the root of this is the earliest models for 16 (later 16.5) mm gauge were toys, not built to any recognisable scale, and so "number 00 gauge" (with zeros) was very much a designation of the gauge. Ignoring the Americans and staying with the 16.5 mm gauge, the change across to writing "OO" has happened after the designation was extended to represent scale models. This might have been in the days when the designation was used for models built to 3.5mm/ft scale, or later when it was established as 4mm/ft.

 

Such a change could only happen if there was a written publication with a broad circulation - perhaps the Model Railway News started to typeset as "OO"?

 

- Richard.

[Nearholmer]

Speak aloud a phone number with a 0 in it, or Flying Scotsman’s BR number.

 

Did you say ‘zero’, ‘nought’, or, much more likely, ‘oh’?

 

How do you speak of a ‘000’ paint brush?

 

My point is that, however it was typeset, I would wager that British people called it ‘double oh’ or ‘oh oh’ from the outset.

Edited March 19, 2018 by Nearholmer

[47137]

Well ... my own phone number has three zeros in it and I do try to remember to pronounce them as "zero" when I think the person at the other end will expect it or appreciate it. I think most people pronounce "00" or "OO" as "oh oh", but it would be good to get to the root of the typesetting to give a clear reply to the OP. He's is being very patient.

 

- Richard.

Edited March 19, 2018 by 47137

[martin_wynne]

The title of this topic is seriously deficient. The 7 main options are:

 

00   0O   O0   OO   oo   ᴑᴑ   ØØ

 

Then there are the less common ones:

 

0o   o0   Oo   oO   ꝊꝊ

 

Martin.

[RJS1977]

Not yet.

 

I've been looking through a copy of the Railway Modeller from 1954, and every mention gives the two letter Os written like this: "OO" gauge (with double quote marks).

This is consistent in the articles and in the advertisements. So if OO is a corruption of 00, we've been using it for a long time.

 

 

 

The (incorrect) use of 'OO' probably goes back to 1938 when Frank Hornby intoduced Hornby Dublo.

[Nearholmer]

Earlier I’d wager. The Hornby marketing men were turning into a tradename what people already said, I’d be pretty sure.

[BernardTPM]

You could say the OO in Dublo is actually 00.