PECO Announces Bullhead Track for OO

[AndyID]

 

 

The chairs are smaller than C&L track, but more things run on it than C&L without problems.  For instance, on the RMWeb Oxford Rail Adams Radial thread, someone reports that the Oxford Radial runs okay on SMP track whereas someone else said that there were problems the wheels running on chairs with C&L track, particularly on curves. 

 

 

That's one of the problems with Code 75 bullhead rail. It's quite tricky to design chairs that will hold the rail consistently at the desired angle while still providing enough clearance between the inside jaw and the wheel flanges. It's a lot simpler with FB rail. 

[hayfield]

What about the trades description act.

 

Bullhead rail that is actually flatbottom, if what has been reported is correct

 

00 gauge track which actually is much nearer to H0 gauge (I know that both share the same gauge, but H0 donates to a scale of 3.5 mm to the foot where as 00 gauge relates to a scale which is 4 mm to the foot).

 

What would the paying public say if a manufacturer made their next loco much nearer to 3.5 mm scale than 4 mm scale then announced its to H0/00 gauge/scale. No doubt those who shout the loudest would either not have contemplated buying it anyway or play with it on their H0/00 gauge track

 

Now if they correctly titled their existing range as H0 and if their proposed new track (range) was called 00 gauge what a sales boom would follow

 

Now where is the smiley face with a tin hat on 

[hayfield]

SMP is cheaper than C&L (although still dearer than Peco usually is). 

 

http://marcway.net/list3.php?col=head&name=SCALEWAY+TRACK

 

The chairs are smaller than C&L track, but more things run on it than C&L without problems.  For instance, on the RMWeb Oxford Rail Adams Radial thread, someone reports that the Oxford Radial runs okay on SMP track whereas someone else said that there were problems the wheels running on chairs with C&L track, particularly on curves. 

 

I suspect that C&L might look better, but I believe that SMP looks better than Peco's Code 75 HO track.

 

SMP has thin sleepers.  If you want to use it with Peco Code 75 points you would probably decide to level it up.  (I used thin cardboard under the SMP flexitrack on my smaller layout.)  With Marcway points, the levels match.

 

Richard

 

I actually prefer the Exactoscale Fastrack bases/ C&L thicker  flexi track, as its about the same thickness as Peco flexi track it is much sturdier than either C&L or SMP both of which has thinner bases. Certainly in track building the thinner C&L timbers are quite unstable once solvent has been used.

 

There is an issue with some stock on C&L track, but I think its the earlier modern models with slightly coarser wheels

[Coryton]

What would the paying public say if a manufacturer made their next loco much nearer to 3.5 mm scale than 4 mm scale then announced its to H0/00 gauge/scale. No doubt those who shout the loudest would either not have contemplated buying it anyway or play with it on their H0/00 gauge track

 

Bachmann Branchline sell an H0 tamper for the UK market with 1/76 scale written on the box.

 

You might say the Hornby RailRoad ex-Lima Deltic is an H0/00 locomotive...

[Richard Lee]

Richard

 

I actually prefer the Exactoscale Fastrack bases/ C&L thicker  flexi track, as its about the same thickness as Peco flexi track it is much sturdier than either C&L or SMP both of which has thinner bases. Certainly in track building the thinner C&L timbers are quite unstable once solvent has been used.

 

There is an issue with some stock on C&L track, but I think its the earlier modern models with slightly coarser wheels

I am sure that the Exactoscale/C&L Thick Track is very good.  Believe me, the problem reported with the Oxford Rail Radial is much more likely to make me avoid buying the OR Adams Radial than the C&L Thick Track.  My instinct is that the thicker sleepers would make it easier to lay than the SMP track, which is a little fragile, in my opinion.

 

At the time I was doing my larger layout, I was trying to do better than Peco, but was on a bit of a budget.  My original intention was to use the SMP plastic kits for points.  That didn't work out, so I stretched my budget for 8 Marcway points.  When I bought the SMP flexi-track, a friend was driving to Bulgaria, and able to bring me a couple of boxes.

 

When I started re-doing the smaller (8' by 18") layout, I was going to use Peco Code 75 track for cost reasons.  I found that I had enough SMP track left over to use with the Peco points.

Edited March 27, 2016 by Richard Lee

[Dunsignalling]

Come again?

Shouldn't this be moved to that Deja Vu thread? 

[Dunsignalling]

 My instinct is that the thicker sleepers would make it easier to lay than the SMP track, which is a little fragile, in my opinion.

 

 

Once fixed down, things become pretty much equal in terms of robustness.

 

SMP saves at least 50% of the ballast required for thick-sleeper track, thereby reducing cost (and weight on portable layouts). It also lends itself more readily to the "Zip" method where track and ballast go down in a single operation. 

 

John

Edited March 27, 2016 by Dunsignalling

[Pacific231G]

Never mind about that, my computer just updated itself to BST (daylight-saving time) right in the middle of compiling the Templot code files. Argh!

 

Martin.

I'm sorry Martin but why would you expect any self respecting computer to carry out such an update at a time other than that calculated to cause the greatest possible annoyance to its user.

Edited March 28, 2016 by Pacific231G

[Colin_McLeod]

After a period off the air, this topic seems to be repeating itself from the beginning.

 

I hope we all get repeat fees for our contributions.

 

Martin.

To find out more go to post #1 and read on.

[hayfield]

I am sure that the Exactoscale/C&L Thick Track is very good.  Believe me, the problem reported with the Oxford Rail Radial is much more likely to make me avoid buying the OR Adams Radial than the C&L Thick Track.  My instinct is that the thicker sleepers would make it easier to lay than the SMP track, which is a little fragile, in my opinion.

 

At the time I was doing my larger layout, I was trying to do better than Peco, but was on a bit of a budget.  My original intention was to use the SMP plastic kits for points.  That didn't work out, so I stretched my budget for 8 Marcway points.  When I bought the SMP flexi-track, a friend was driving to Bulgaria, and able to bring me a couple of boxes.

 

When I started re-doing the smaller (8' by 18") layout, I was going to use Peco Code 75 track for cost reasons.  I found that I had enough SMP track left over to use with the Peco points.

 

Richard

 

Whilst this is possibly going slightly off topic it will confirm one benefit of Peco track.

 

Certainly for the less accomplished modeller the Thicker sleepers used by both Peco and Exactoscale are more suitable as they are far less liable to distort if the track is pinned to the layout boards (many still use this method)

 

Agreed Exactoscale and the proposed new Peco track will use more ballast than SMP and C&L flexi track, but the topic is about Peco's new range so the ballast requirements will be much the same.

 

Sorry for this going slightly off topic but as Peco's track availability is quite some time off, if anyone is tempted to build their own points or but pre-made ones. Do stay away from thin plastic sleepers, use either the thicker plastic ones or thin ply, both of which do not suffer plastic curl caused by the solvent drying out and shrinking.

 

I do think its a step forward getting a (hopefully) 4 mm scale 00 gauge ready to lay track system, hopefully with more than just one supplier, as there is nothing like competition to  move things on. Hopefully the choice of ranges will meet the differing needs mentioned in this topic

[No Decorum]

What would the paying public say if a manufacturer made their next loco much nearer to 3.5 mm scale than 4 mm scale then announced its to H0/00 gauge/scale. No doubt those who shout the loudest would either not have contemplated buying it anyway or play with it on their H0/00 gauge track

“Not for me,” if the compromise-scale Royal Scot of many years ago is anything to go by.

[Vistisen]

I'm sorry Martin but why would you expect any self respecting computer carry out such an update at a time other than that calculated to cause the greatest possible annoyance to its user.

To be honest. It has nothing to do with the computer (or the software to be more accurate). Changing at any other time would be just wrong as it IS here that time changes in Europe. It would be distorting the dimension of time to do it at any other time. and I'm sure that nobody here would ever dream of distorting dimensions!  

[KeithHC]

I spoke with the Peco people at the York show today, and they said they expected the OO Bullhead track at the end of the year, possibly for Warley,  maybe December.

 

Jamie

Thanks Jamie for the information.

 

Keith HC

[Pacific231G]

To be honest. It has nothing to do with the computer (or the software to be more accurate). Changing at any other time would be just wrong as it IS here that time changes in Europe. It would be distorting the dimension of time to do it at any other time. and I'm sure that nobody here would ever dream of distorting dimensions!

Time is just an illusion, summer time even more so.

 

It's not the computer (the combination of hardware, firmware and software) changing the time at the appointed moment that's annoying; it's their irritating (and sometimes worse) habit of always deciding that their internal housekeeping is more urgent than whatever task you need them to carry out.

I wait with trepidation for driverless cars that decide that a software update is more important than applying the brakes- come to think of it I don't have to wait, a lot of drivers using mobile phones already seem to be programmed that way.

Edited March 28, 2016 by Pacific231G

[martin_wynne]

I'm sorry Martin but why would you expect any self respecting computer to carry out such an update at a time other than that calculated to cause the greatest possible annoyance to its user.

 

Fortunately no lasting harm done -- just an alarming screen covered in several dozen warning messages about file time-stamps changing.

 

After the millions of man-hours spent developing Windows over 25 years, you would think a simple message saying "It's time to update the system clock to daylight-saving - do it now?" wouldn't be too much to ask for.

 

Martin.

[Dunsignalling]

 

 

I do think its a step forward getting a (hopefully) 4 mm scale 00 gauge ready to lay track system, hopefully with more than just one supplier, as there is nothing like competition to  move things on. Hopefully the choice of ranges will meet the differing needs mentioned in this topic

There is no such thing as 4mm scale OO gauge track (at least in the UK) and there never can be. You can have [a] 4mm scale track (P4), or you can have 16.5mm gauge track (HO).

 

What C&L and SMP already make and what Peco will introduce in due course, is a version of distorted to make it look a bit more like [a]. Whilst it might conveniently be referred to as OO gauge, it is only OO scale in certain of its features.

 

Pure OO is a defunct (AFAIK) American scale that used three-quarters-of-an-inch (19mm as near as makes no odds) gauge track and never really took off commercially.

 

The British designation OO/HO simply (and accurately) describes models made to OO scale but adapted to run on HO gauge track, the compromise being dreamed up way back when reasonably-priced motors were too large to fit into UK outline locomotives made to the 3.5mm scale in common use elsewhere in Europe.

 

It would have saved an awful lot of trouble and confusion over the years if the sub-O Gauge standard chosen for British r-t-r had been the American one!

 

John

 

PS: See Ed Cayton's post #775 in this thread for a good dollop of common sense.

Edited March 28, 2016 by Dunsignalling

[martin_wynne]

There is no such thing as 4mm scale 00 gauge track

 

Yes there is. It was defined by the BRMSB more than 60 years ago, and represents 4ft-1.5in gauge track in 4mm/ft scale (matching the 4ft-1.5in gauge 4mm/ft rolling stock available for 00 gauge). Very many modellers have adopted it over the years, and many such layouts exist.

 

Many modellers are happy to model 4ft-1.5in gauge, otherwise no-one would be buying all those RTR 00 gauge models made for 4ft-1.5in gauge.

 

No part of 00 gauge is 3.5mm/ft scale, it is 4mm/ft scale throughout.

 

You may prefer to model 4ft-8.5in gauge, but that is a matter for you.

 

Martin.

Edited March 28, 2016 by martin_wynne

[Vistisen]

Fortunately no lasting harm done -- just an alarming screen covered in several dozen warning messages about file time-stamps changing.

 

After the millions of man-hours spent developing Windows over 25 years, you would think a simple message saying "It's time to update the system clock to daylight-saving - do it now?" wouldn't be too much to ask for.

 

Martin.

There is, you can just turn the automatic update to summertime off.

[martin_wynne]

There is, you can just turn the automatic update to summertime off.

 

But I would want a reminder about it. I don't want to go on working for hours with the wrong time. Just delay the change for a few minutes, if necessary, until I've finished what I'm doing.

 

Martin.

[Pacific231G]

There is no such thing as 4mm scale OO gauge track (at least in the UK) and there never can be. You can have [a] 4mm scale track (P4), or you can have 16.5mm gauge track (HO).

 

What C&L and SMP already make and what Peco will introduce in due course, is a version of distorted to make it look a bit more like [a]. Whilst it might conveniently be referred to as OO gauge, it is only OO scale in certain of its features.

 

Pure OO is a defunct (AFAIK) American scale that used three-quarters-of-an-inch (19mm as near as makes no odds) gauge track and never really took off commercially.

 

The British designation OO/HO simply (and accurately) describes models made to OO scale but adapted to run on HO gauge track, the compromise being dreamed up way back when reasonably-priced motors were too large to fit into UK outline locomotives made to the 3.5mm scale in common use elsewhere in Europe.

 

It would have saved an awful lot of trouble and confusion over the years if the sub-O Gauge standard chosen for British r-t-r had been the American one!

 

John

 

PS: See Ed Cayton's post #775 in this thread for a good dollop of common sense.

Sorry John but your history is a bit out though I agree with you about how much better off we'd all be if the gross compromise of OO (followed by TT-3 and British N scale) hadn't been persisted with.

OO/H0 is usually only used for items iike track where the gauge is the same, or for things such as trees or ballast where the scale can be a bit vague (though it's pushing it a bit for little people)*

 

OO or 00 (everyone was a bit vague about that) was originally introduced into Britain as a gauge (of 5/8 inch) soon after the First World War later being defined as 16mm and later still becoming16.5mm gauge. The original German manufacturer Bing may have used a nominal gauge of 16mm but the first "standards" for it, written by Henry Greenly in about 1914 and revived after the war (and defended vigorously by him whenever scale modellers suggested something more accurate)  used a scale of 4mm/ft. The actual products though were still little more than toys and, though Bing worked with Bassett-Lowke and Greenly, their scale was rather vague so it was all probably a bit like the Lone Star Treble-O-Lectric range from 1959.

 

From the mid 1920s and possibly before, there was then a furious debate (though very few people were actually working with the smaller scales) about whether to adopt the true scale for the gauge of 3.5mm/ft, whether to use the increasingly popular scale of 4mm/ft but with the "correct" gauge of 19mm, or whether to stick with the compromise of 4m/ft scale on the narrower track. All this was still being called OO . One or two layouts were built using 19mm gauge track and a few more with 3.5mm scale and 16.5mm gauge and by the end of the 1920s that was becoming known as H0. Both scales found their way to N. America where small scale modelling was getting under way some years after its British start and H0 (still sometimes known as OO) also found its way into Europe.

 

What is now generally known as American OO isn't completely defunct. It still has a small following; there are NMRA standards for it and a Special Interest Group http://www.nmra.org/oo-scale-sig-page  but for a while in the 1940s and 1950s it was pretty popular and supported by several manufacturers including Tru-Scale and Lionel.

 

The  mixture of metric and imperial units in the scale definitions is a dead giveaweay of their British origins. American O scale is 1:48 scale (one inch to four feet) and in Germany and much of Europe O was and is 1:45 scale. For the smaller scale, until the mid 1950s, German manufacturers favoured 1:80 scale until pan European standards were agreed in 1953 with H0 settled as 1:87 scale.

 

You may have noticed that until about 1950 scales and gauges were only defined to the nearest half millimetre so 19mm was effectively the true scale gauge for 4mm/ft scale and it was a happy coincidence that 16.5mm just happened to be dead scale for standard gauge at 3.5mm/ft.

 

When the BRMSB was developing standards for British Railway Modelling during the war they defined 16.5mm gauge and 4mm/ft scale as "Standard  OO"(effectively coarse scale) but concluded that 19mm gauge was too wide for British steam locos so opted, amid some controversy, for the gauge of 18mm for "Scale OO"  that later became EM gauge.I strongly suspect that if British modellers had generally adopted 4mm/ft scale and 18mm gauge during the 1930s as some were proposing that would probably be what most railway modellers throughout the world would now be working with; we tend to forget how much railway modelling, like railways themselves, was a British development. Peco for example is a very well respected brand almost everywhere it seems except in Britain.

 

 

*Airfix and, at least for a while after they took over the range, Dapol did refer to their rolling stock and trackside models as OO and HO but that was pretty misleading

Edited March 30, 2016 by Pacific231G

[BG John]

Shouldn't Double O gauge be 14mm/ft, so 16.5mm gauge is actually a scale 15" gauge, reduced slightly to allow for wider wheels?

[Dunsignalling]

I have a copy of Model Railways by Henry Greenly (Cassell & Co. 1924) which unfortunately only runs to a half-page outline entitled "No. 00 Gauge "Table" Railways" also touching on his role in its origins but without expanding on his standards beyond the scale being 4mm:1ft and the gauge, 16mm (5/8th inch). The table of dimensions only starts at O Gauge but extends to 2" scale running on 9.5" gauge. It truly was a different world in those days; I wonder what he would have made of T Scale?

 

I fully understand what 00 Gauge is (though I tend to use OO when typing or talking) but the word scale should be kept a safe distance from it. IMHO   The post I first responded to referred to "4mm scale OO gauge ready to lay track" which is contradictory; if it is OO gauge (16.5mm) it cannot be fully to 4mm scale for standard gauge track (I've never come across a 4' 1 1/2" gauge prototype but would love to see photos).

    

As you say, "Scale 00" is what we nowadays call EM. I happily embrace the scale/gauge discrepancy (which it is, however one dresses it up) of commercial OO because the mechanical "slack" it provides allows me, by hiding the sillier curves, to get much more railway into any given space than I could if I worked in a (more) correct 4mm scale/gauge. 

 

I concede your point on 00 pre-dating HO having referred to my copy of Railway Modelling In Miniature by Edward Beal (Third edition, Percival Marshall undated but c1948, I think) and, just to prove that there is nothing new under the sun, quote from Page 1 on the choice between HO and OO:

 

"It is far too late in the day to hope to change definitely to one or the other".

 

It appears that I have long believed an old half-truth in relation to motor sizes and it appears that the combination of 4mm scale on 5/8th inch gauge track can only have been chosen, primarily, to allow coarse wheels to fit under splashers whose overall width conformed to scale dimensions. 

 

John

Edited March 28, 2016 by Dunsignalling

[AndyID]

Ah! Here we go again with the "something is wrong with 00" stuff.

 

Nothing is wrong with 00. The reduced gauge from scale is a consequence of using wheels that will negotiate very small radius (train-set) curves without messing up the appearance of steam locomotives by having to put the running gear in the wrong place.

 

In other words, if you were to build a Duchess of Montrose to 1:76.2 scale that ran on 18.5 mm gauge "train-set" track, it would look horrible. Mr Hornby knew what he was doing.

[Dunsignalling]

Ah! Here we go again with the "something is wrong with 00" stuff.

 

Nothing is wrong with 00. The reduced gauge from scale is a consequence of using wheels that will negotiate very small radius (train-set) curves without messing up the appearance of steam locomotives by having to put the running gear in the wrong place.

 

In other words, if you were to build a Duchess of Montrose to 1:76.2 scale that ran on 18.5 mm gauge "train-set" track, it would look horrible. Mr Hornby knew what he was doing.

OO actually pre-dated Mr Hornby by more than a decade.

 

The fact is that what we call P4 would not have been technically possible when OO was invented and the limitations that such true-scale underpinnings impose would seriously hamper my and your enjoyment of the hobby by drastically restricting what we could model in a relatively modest space. 

 

OO is "wrong" but it is so for darned good reasons, most of which are as valid today as they were in the 1920s.

 

John

[AndyID]

00 is not "wrong". It is designed to meet a set of requirements which it does perfectly well. P4 meets a completely different set of requirements.