The forerunners of H0/00 gauge

[RJS1977]

17 minutes ago, GoingUnderground said:

 

 

That sounds about right to me.

 

If you were defining a scale from scratch it would make sense to make it a ratio within the measurement system, metric or imperial, e.g. 1:100 or 1:80 or 1:75. or even 1:64. The idea of devising a scale where the prototype is measured in imperial units and that is translated into metric units is, to me anyway, bizarre. To me it looks like a way to force a definition for a scale for something that wasn't built to a specific scale in the first place.

 

Does anyone know the rationale for doing it this way? 

 

I don't know what the rationale is, but 4mm, 3mm and 2mm:ft are actually quite easy scales to work with mathematically.

 

4mm/ft for example, means 1mm is equivalent to 3 inches, which is much easier to work with than dividing by 76, 75, 72 or 80. Measure the prototype in imperial, build the model in metric - simples!

[Nearholmer]

55 minutes ago, GoingUnderground said:

Does anyone know the rationale for doing it this way? 

The gauges came first, 3, 2 and 1, then a bit later 0, and later still “about half of 0”. The imposition of scales only came once ‘railway modellers’, as opposed to people buying toys primarily for children, got involved, and they were back-fitted to the gauges.

 

Taking 0 as an instance, in Britain, which is where small scale railway modelling got going, there was some use of 1/48 before things settled on 7mm/ft, and some of Greenly’s early essays were in 1/48, but he seems then to have decided that he preferred 7mm/ft. 1/48 stuck in the USA, whereas some European countries adopted 1/45.

 

Gauge 1 still seems to vaccinate* between 1/32 and 10mm/ft even now.

 

So, it should be no surprise that this “roughly half of 0” thing wasn’t settled for a while, and then into two camps, plus a load of sub-camps with slightly different gauges.

 

PS: I suspect that the Greenly/WJB-L difference of understanding arose because Greenly knew what he’d designed to, and WJB-L knew what he’d specified (“half the size of 0”), and they weren’t the same!

 

*Spellcheck is obsessed with vaccination. I typed “vacillate”.

Edited August 16, 2021 by Nearholmer

[GoingUnderground]

1 hour ago, RJS1977 said:

 

I don't know what the rationale is, but 4mm, 3mm and 2mm:ft are actually quite easy scales to work with mathematically.

 

4mm/ft for example, means 1mm is equivalent to 3 inches, which is much easier to work with than dividing by 76, 75, 72 or 80. Measure the prototype in imperial, build the model in metric - simples!

And what if the item isn't a multiple of 3 inches? As the basis is supposed to be 3.5mm:1 ft that's damned damned hard in anybody's language. Working in 0 gauge at 7mm = 12 inches is just as bad. It really looks like dreaming up some sort of scaling that fitted what had been made and the closest fit was this weird hybrid of Imperial:Metric. 

 

My point is that you just wouldn't define a scale in that way, especially if you were working in the metric system as they would have been in Germany from 1872 and from that date the dimensions of the prototypes would have been defined under the metric system. So defining a scale by reference to a measurement system (Imperial) not used in the country just wouldn't happen.

 

Equally, in the UK it was a strange way to define scales back in the period between 1900 and the 1940s as the metric system has only really come into everyday use here from around the 1950s.

[BernardTPM]

1 hour ago, RJS1977 said:

4mm/ft for example, means 1mm is equivalent to 3 inches, which is much easier to work with than dividing by 76, 75, 72 or 80. Measure the prototype in imperial, build the model in metric - simples!

With 4mm scale if you have the prototype measurements in inches*, divide by 3 and that's the model length in mm. Works as easily for 2mm & 3mm scales too, dividing by 6 and 4 respectively. H0's 3½mm to one foot has no such easy conversion.

 

For protoypes built to metric measurements it would be a lot easier if there were 1:50 & 1:100 (almost, but not quite 3mm scale) scales. The historic development though means for most of them the gauge came first and then they worked out a scale to fit the gauge hence you end up with quite a random selection of scales 1:160, 1:87, 1:45 etc. By historical accident Continental TT is 1:120 which is exactly 1/10th inch to a foot because the Americans originally devised it.

 

* Most British prototypes until well into the 1960s fit this category.

[RJS1977]

27 minutes ago, GoingUnderground said:

And what if the item isn't a multiple of 3 inches? As the basis is supposed to be 3.5mm:1 ft that's damned damned hard in anybody's language. Working in 0 gauge at 7mm = 12 inches is just as bad. It really looks like dreaming up some sort of scaling that fitted what had been made and the closest fit was this weird hybrid of Imperial:Metric. 

 

My point is that you just wouldn't define a scale in that way, especially if you were working in the metric system as they would have been in Germany from 1872 and from that date the dimensions of the prototypes would have been defined under the metric system. So defining a scale by reference to a measurement system (Imperial) not used in the country just wouldn't happen.

 

Equally, in the UK it was a strange way to define scales back in the period between 1900 and the 1940s as the metric system has only really come into everyday use here from around the 1950s.

 

I certainly didn't mean to imply that to be why the scales were chosen - I don't know why they were, as you say, the metric system didn't come into general use in the UK until much later - but it has worked out as a very useful result for 2mm, 3mm and 4mm scales!

[Pacific231G]

3 hours ago, RJS1977 said:

 

I don't know what the rationale is, but 4mm, 3mm and 2mm:ft are actually quite easy scales to work with mathematically.

 

4mm/ft for example, means 1mm is equivalent to 3 inches, which is much easier to work with than dividing by 76, 75, 72 or 80. Measure the prototype in imperial, build the model in metric - simples!

That was the rationale. and the ease of taking the measurement in feet and multiplying by four to get it in mm was one of the arguments put forward for 4mm/ft by its advocated in the 1920s/1930s. Simples of course if you're in a country where rules are commonly marked in inches and mlllimetres and, if that country happened to invent railway modelling then the rest of the world's railway modellers, in countries where imperial and metric measurements are not commonly used together, will find themselves stuck with some very odd scale ratios, as indeed they have been.  

Although Britain didn't adopt the metric system for weights and measures until the 1970s, cgs was very generally used in science and of course people were buying things like cars and bicycles from European countries so had reasons to be au fait with metric measures. 

 

Edited August 16, 2021 by Pacific231G

[goldfish]

All the the standard model railway gauges and scales derive from pragmatic decisions taken over a century ago by people wanting to sell more toy trains. Everything that has come since is basically hand waving to justify accepting those arbitrary decisions as being set in stone.

[Il Grifone]

13 hours ago, Johann Marsbar said:

 

Don't forget Ricchi e Poveri...........

 

I certainly got fed up of hearing "Felicità" by Bano/Power when it was in the Dutch charts in the early 1980's!

 

I was trying to do just that! (To be fair they are not the worst though.)

 

I was fed up of hearing 'Felicità' some time during the first time I heard it!.

 

At the moment 'Volare' is playing on the TV (luckily only a brief sample!)

[Nearholmer]

If anyone has c£1500 to spare, there is a very interesting item on eBay at present: a Carette ‘Cardean’, made as one of thousands for the CR c1910 as publicity items. A scale model in beautifully printed tin, and I believe to 1/48 scale. These were ‘floor toys’, clockwork, but flangeless wheels, but a great many were converted to 0 and used on layouts.

[Il Grifone]

16 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Are you deliberately, or accidentally, excluding all the very good pre and post WW1 German-made material for the British market?

 

I will mention again the Bing George the Fifth, because it was the longest-sold of that pack. It is a very good, and incredibly robust,  model.

 

Well I did say "British." Those with bottomless pockets had a wide range of good models to choose.

Perhaps one of the less realistic was the Märklin model of 'The Great Bear' which was later rehashed as 'Flying Scotsman'. It completely missed the characteristic large/huge firebox.

Here's a beat up example:

https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/marklin-great-bear-engine-an-tender-230-c-9e81b29082

 

The comment, "Paint is worn" seems to be a tad optimistic!

 

 

Edited August 17, 2021 by Il Grifone
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[Il Grifone]

H. Greenly had rather an obsession with building the body to a larger scale than the chassis/gauge. Even his miniature railways were so designed.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Greenly

 

It was decided to switch to the metric system in the sixties (Wilson Government IIRC) with the completion by 1975. The subsequent Conservative government put paid to that, despite taking us into the then Common Market. (We had been trying ever since it was realised that Churchill's "Fine for Europe, but not for us* " was a grave error.)

* Or words to that effect. (Interesting that our Man of the Millennium was three/quarters American and the second was half French.)

[Nearholmer]

Maerklin never got their products for Britain right until the 1930s; always lumpen and disproportionate, missing the point that Britishers values scale.

 

I do think that you are over-estimating The depth of pocket needed to buy Bing in the 1920s. They were head-to-head with Hornby’s No.2 range. Hornby ‘value engineered’ their No.2 4-4-4T and 4-4-0, and went freelance in the process, undercutting Bing, but not by much. Bing responded with a far better clockwork, and some cracking Greenly-designed locos, including the King Arthur, which was compressed, but totally recognisable. Then Bing went out of business, because of changing conditions in Germany.

 

Now, most people in the 1920s had their pockets sewn-up at the entrance, but if Hornby wasn’t a super-premium make, then neither was Bing.

[Il Grifone]

True, but most people in the twenties were under severe economic restraint. They had survived WWI, the Spanish 'Flu* and the "Land fit for Heroes" never materialised. Things were even worse in Germany with galloping inflation.

 

* Much more devastating than Covid-19.  https://pmj.bmj.com/content/97/1147/273

[sncf231e]

1 hour ago, Il Grifone said:

H. Greenly had rather an obsession with building the body to a larger scale than the chassis/gauge. Even his miniature railways were so designed.

 

 

I wonder whether it is an obsession of Greenly or just  a very good eye for modelling. As I stated in my e-book on Gauge and Scale (http://sncf231e.nl/gauge-and-scale/) (which no-one want to have a look at, I found out):

One could question whether the gauge and the length, width and height of a train should all be scaled with the same proportion. Since wheel width and flanges in model trains are in general oversized, it might be a choice to “undersize” the gauge.

 

Regards

Fred

Edited August 17, 2021 by sncf231e

[Il Grifone]

Looking up prices on the web (my 0 gauge 'bible' is not to hand    ), I found a no. 2 4-4-2T cost 32/6d in 1928. According to official figures* this equates to about £100 in today's money. This is not unduly expensive (and rather less than one would cost today!).

 

* For what they're worth as they do not take into account 'disposable income'.

 

I have downloaded the e-book (for which many thanks) but have to admit not having opened it. I promise to remedy this ASAP.

[Tartaruga]

43 minutes ago, sncf231e said:

 As I stated in my e-book on Gauge and Scale (http://sncf231e.nl/gauge-and-scale/) (which no-one want to have a look at, I found out):

 

I've read it and found it interesting.

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, Il Grifone said:

Things were even worse in Germany with galloping inflation.

Which I think was what crashed Bing. They were an absolutely huge toy-maker and their market disappeared as ‘disposable’ evaporated in people’s wallets; it must have played havoc with their export pricing too. Nazism then capped it all.

 

 

Edited August 17, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Il Grifone]

I understand Herr Bing himself escaped in the nick of time and his assets were transferred to somebody more Aryan. (I hope one is allowed to use that word - see next line.)

(To put it more politically correct terms!)

 

I gather the German inflation was eventually cured by taking Germany off the gold standard and basing the currency on something more practical e.g. food.

 

Someone once described the world economy as being based on how fast gold (an otherwise rather useless* metal) can be dug out of a hole in one place and then buried in another hole somewhere else.

(I read somewhere once that some of the gold in Fort Knox is so well protected that it is impossible to get it out again.)

*Decoration and electrical contacts and ?  It is very dense so could be used for weighting model trains

[goldfish]

1 hour ago, sncf231e said:

As I stated in my e-book on Gauge and Scale (http://sncf231e.nl/gauge-and-scale/) (which no-one want to have a look at, I found out):

 

I have also read it and found it very interesting.

[Nearholmer]

A couple of Bing prices from 1929, just out of interest.

 

 

[Mark Carne]

7 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

A couple of Bing prices from 1929, just out of interest.

 

 

Most people really don't realise just how prolific Bing were in the British market in the 1920s. And how keenly priced they were compared with Hornby. Or just how much Hornby and Bing copied each other and made introductions on an almost tit for tat basis. There's certainly plenty of 1920s British market Bing still floating around in the UK. I'd say, based on my collecting experience, it would be far easier to build up a wide ranging collection of British market Bing from the 1920s, than the equivalent in Hornby.

 

And replying to the earlier point about the cost of things, I recall reading in the reproduction Bing 1912 catalogue that the retail price of a lithographed George the Fifth was 12/6, and in the pre WW1 B/L catalogues, a Carette litho George the Fifth or GNR Atlantic was 8/6. "Cheapie" Carette wagons were 1/- each. They must have sold in reasonable quantities, as they still turn up often enough.

 

Mark

[Andy Kirkham]

19 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

A couple of Bing prices from 1929, just out of interest.

 

 

 

 

With that long single splasher it looks to me more like a GCR Lord Farringdon than anything else..

[goldfish]

43 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

A couple of Bing prices from 1929, just out of interest.

 

To put the Bing prices into perspective, some of Hornby's 1929 offerings.

 

[Nearholmer]

Maybe we should decamp to ‘Coarse 0’, if Fred doesn’t want his sub-0 thread swamped.

[Il Grifone]

55/- seems like a bargain, but since money has devalued something like 60/70 times since then it's around £200 today. Still not expensive, but....

 

It's notable that of the four Hornby 4-4-0 models* two were new designs (D49 & L1) one was still current though not 'new' (Compound) and the GWR (County) was obsolete and all were withdrawn during the next few years (see below).

 

* I think unlike their earlier offerings these can be described as models.