Is trackwork the poor relation of the hobby ?

[t-b-g]

Hi Tony,

 

00 means 4mm/ft scale, so if it's 3.5mm/ft scale it is not 00.

 

00 track gauge is set to 16.5mm, representing a 4mm/ft scale model of 4ft-1.5in gauge railway track. What it would represent at 3.5mm/ft is meaningless, because 00 is not 3.5mm/ft scale.

 

It follows that 00 sleeper sizes and spacings should be to 4mm/ft scale, not reduced to some other scale.

 

To see the sense of this, consider 18.2mm EM track gauge. No-one says that EM track is built to 3.87mm/ft or suggests modifying sleeper sizes and spacings to that scale.

 

The tragedy is that none of this would be contentious if the major model track manufacturer had followed the established standards for 00, instead of foisting H0 track on modellers for 40 years and calling it 00.

 

After all, it's not a minor difference:

 

 

 

 

I didn't say the track itself looks daft. I said it looks daft when 4mm rolling stock runs over it. Which to my eyes it does.

 

regards,

 

Martin.

 

As I said, anybody working in OO has to accept a compromise and we are all free to decide where and how we do that.

 

The only thing HO and OO track have in common is the gauge at 16.5mm. Other than that HO track should have smaller rails/chairs/sleepers etc. as well as closer spacings of sleepers.

 

For you, having correct 4mm scale sleeper spacings is more important than the proportions between the gauge and the sleeper spacings. For me, it is the other way around. Neither version is any more right or wrong than the other, just different ways of looking at the options. I am not advocating that we run our 4mm scale models on 3.5mm scale track. It is more that we utilise 4mm scale components and slightly re-position some of them them to improve on the proportions of the track.

 

If you use the arguement that OO track is 4 1 1/2" in 4mm scale and has nothing to do with HO, then I could say that I am simply putting my 4mm sleepers closer together (to the same ratio as the track is narrowed by) to preserve the proportions.

 

I am shortly going to be mounting one of my points on a display board and will be painting and ballasting it. As this is all new to me, I will be quite interested to see if my ideas come off when some rolling stock appears on them.

 

At the very least, I will have tried out something that I haven't done before in an attempt to make some better looking points for a OO layout. It will either work or it won't but I think it has to be worth a try.

 

Interesting stuff this track!

 

Cheers,

 

Tony

[martin_wynne]

For you, having correct 4mm scale sleeper spacings is more important than the proportions between the gauge and the sleeper spacings.

 

Hi Tony,

 

No, I want the correct proportions too -- for a proper 4mm scale model of 4ft-1.5in track on 8ft sleepers.

 

I know there isn't a lot of such track on the prototype, but that doesn't prevent the making of a model of it. When you buy 00 gauge rolling stock it is designed to run on 4ft-1.5in gauge track, so the logical thing is to build such track for it to run on.

 

The BRMSB took the same view when it published the 00 gauge standards about 1950.

 

regards,

 

Martin.

[Trog]

Hi

 

I have admittedly not read through all of this thread - although read much of it.  I'm in the process of laying some Peco OO Code 75 track and to a certain extent find all of this baffling.  Are there right answers or is it all a compromise and rather subjective?

 

 

 

 

 

Any advice / opinions on this would be welcome.  As said - is this just down to visual impression or is there a correct procedure that others are following to improve the appearance?   I have only done a small section thus far so views needed at this stage!!

 

Thanks

 

Remember also that mainline track can be anything between 24 and 30 sleepers in 60'-0" in normal use.

 

If you include the unusual and non standard the range goes up to 22 and 36 sleepers in 60'-0".

[autocoach]

I would guess that a large percentage of model track is used to represent sidings and branch lines or industrial trackage rather than mainlines.  More to the Col. Stephens standard than modern mainline concrete high speed trackage. Definitely timber sleepers,  BH or FB?  2,3 or 4 bolt chair?

[zarniwhoop]

A couple of track gauges and some copper clad sleepers soldered in could soon sort out any out of gauge parts.

Yes.  I've used copperclad sleepers at one place, if I was doing it again I'd use them more frequently. And yes to the gauges, of course - I was just pointing out than when I tried it I believed it would be a lot easier than building track.

 

ken

[coachmann]

I have lengths of flexible 'British' bullhead track C+L track in 00 in EM and P4. They look alike apart from distance between rails and so if everyone purchased C+L or SMP flexible track the appearance of their track would improve 100%. Surely all the British hobby needs is matching points (self-latching) on stronger plastic bases?  If flat-bottom rail provided greater strength on points then I personally wouldnt mind so long as it had chairs.

[Michael Woolford]

I think the point (sorry) about RTR manufacturers making matching turnouts (I presume you are talking about sleeper spacing?) Is that once they start producing these sorts of items you will get people wanting particular types of size, and that in itself is a very long list to choose a small number of sizes to make. However, if they were to take their existing range of sizes and put them onto a correctly spaced base, it would improve the look drastically. I also can't see C&L making something like this as it would take a major manufacturer to keep costs as low as possible. Don't forget that as with anything, cost is a major factor and quite frankly, it would most probably be ridiculous. I really can't see it happening unfortunately; unless sales declined due to the specific reason of realism, I think it's safe to say things will stay as they are. 

 

Michael

[Pacific231G]

Hi Tony,

 

No, I want the correct proportions too -- for a proper 4mm scale model of 4ft-1.5in track on 8ft sleepers.

 

I know there isn't a lot of such track on the prototype, but that doesn't prevent the making of a model of it. When you buy 00 gauge rolling stock it is designed to run on 4ft-1.5in gauge track, so the logical thing is to build such track for it to run on.

 

The BRMSB took the same view when it published the 00 gauge standards about 1950.

 

regards,

 

Martin.

Hi Martin

The British Railway Model Standards Bureau was a rather curious animal. It was a self-appointed committee of four members formed at the end of 1940 by the editors of the MRN and MRC to deal with the lack of standards that had bedevilled model railways. With virtually no model manufacturing going on during the war it did provide an opportunity to develop agreed standards rather as the NMRA was already doing. The committee seems to have met very sporadically during the war- it didn't have a Chairman or a name until July 1941- but issued recommendations for 0 gauge agreed with W.J. Bassett-Lowke that September and for other scales in 1944. Towards the end of 1945, just as manufacturing was starting to be resumed, it issued standards agreed with the Model Engineering Trades Association but history doesn't relate how much horse trading there had been between the committee and the manufacturers. I don't think it was ever formally dissolved but the BRMSB seems to have quietly faded away from about 1947.

The BRMSB approach does beg some questions one of which must be whether a railway with a gauge of 4ft 1 1/2 inches would really have been laid on 8 ft sleepers. Once you accept that the 00 scale/gauge combination is a compromise that most British modellers are probably stuck with (though it's clear that even the BRMSB thought it excessive so came up with fine scale 00 rechristened in 1947 as EM) then I wonder if you really can come up with a single best practice. I can see at least three possibly approaches each of which may be equally valid.

 

1. Model everything except the gauge of the track to 4mm scale including track centres. sleeper dimensions and spacing and accept that the rails themselves are narrow gauge. I think this was the BRMSB approach that you're seeing as logical.

 

2. Decide that the 00 compromise is widthways not lengthways (i.e in the y dimension but not the x) so space the sleepers and make them the right width for 1:76 scale but shorten their length to 1:87th. This will make the sleepers short and fat when viewed from directly above but from the angles model railways are normally viewed from will probably look alright except that the distance from the nearest rail to a platform edge or anything else based on structure gauge will be rather large.

 

3. Model the trackwork to the same 1:87th scale as its gauge and accept that the sleeper spacing will be too close and the sleepers short against platforms etc.This seems to be what the vast majority of 00 modellers are actually consciously or unconsciously doing when they use proprietary trackwork made to H0 dimensions.

 

In the end I suspect this really comes down to aesthetics rather than logic and what looks least wrong will be different for different modellers.