Jump to content
 

Modelling Scales and Gauges


  

46 members have voted

  1. 1. What is your prefered scale to model in

    • O
      2
    • OO
      31
    • HO
      3
    • TT
      0
    • N
      4
    • Z
      0
    • T
      0
    • Other
      15


Recommended Posts

Hi

 

Is it just me that is trying to figure out the difference scale gauge combinations that there are out there? I came across this today so I though I would share it with you guys

 

 

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

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_transport_modelling_scale_standards#NEM

 

 

 

Colin

Link to post
Share on other sites

Colin, on the Wikipedia page, look at the top of the chart under Scales. Click the small UP arrow, next to the word scale in the middle column. This will not sort the list by scale modeled, giving you a more clear picture of what 'gauges' are modeled in what scales.

 

A simplified example, for 1/76.2 (also referred to as 4mm) scale, there are 5 gauges listed. 00 for the accepted commercial standard, 009 and 0012 for popular narrow gauge modelling, and EM and P4 for those wanting track built to more correct gauge width in 4mm scale modelling.

 

If you created the poll, you are asking which 'scale', but really give the 'gauge', for your choices.

 

In my case, I selected 00, which is 1/76 (4mm) 'scale' modeling. However, I will be building a narrow gauge layout, using N (9mm track gauge) track, to represent the narrow gauge track, but working to 4mm 'scale'.

 

More confused now? :)

 

Jim

Link to post
Share on other sites

F-Unit, I definitely agree those % points are close to correct, but results here could be different, depending on who, and how many, do actually vote.

 

Curious, have you a fave F Unit paint scheme? :)

 

Colin, take a look at this chart, it 'might' be a bit clearer, at least for UK modelling.

 

http://www.brmna.org/modinf.shtml

 

Jim

 

Oh dear .... some serious misinformation there!

 

The comments on Hornby are grotesquely wrong. Not only will all Hornby stock from about the last 30 years  run happily on Streamline anything produced by them in the last 15 years will run on the standard most commonly used for handbuilt OO track. Their wheels nowadays are a reasonable approximation of RP25/110.

 

That "advice" page reads as if someone has gaily replicated decades old material (and ancient prejudices)  with a scanner, then cut and pasted it into HTML - regardless of modern realities 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh dear .... some serious misinformation there!

 

The comments on Hornby are grotesquely wrong. Not only will all Hornby stock from about the last 30 years  run happily on Streamline anything produced by them in the last 15 years will run on the standard most commonly used for handbuilt OO track. Their wheels nowadays are a reasonable approximation of RP25/110.

 

That "advice" page reads as if someone has gaily replicated decades old material (and ancient prejudices)  with a scanner, then cut and pasted it into HTML - regardless of modern realities 

I agree

The trouble is that there is enough in there that is true to mislead the unwary into assuming it's all true which it most certainly isn't. 

Link to post
Share on other sites

F-Unit, I definitely agree those % points are close to correct, but results here could be different, depending on who, and how many, do actually vote.

 

Curious, have you a fave F Unit paint scheme? :)

 

Colin, take a look at this chart, it 'might' be a bit clearer, at least for UK modelling.

 

http://www.brmna.org/modinf.shtml

 

Jim

 

Not really.  it doesn't even manage to get the gauge right for S.  Misinformation is not at all useful.

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

No need for apology JimF51.  There is much misinformation out there and the problem is not helped by the fact that the OP has mixed up scale and gauge.  And to be honest I have also been guilty of doing this many times in the past and will probably do so again in the future. 

 

As a consequence, all of the narrow and broad gauge modellers are excluded from the standard choices and can only choose "other".  Which probably explains why the current results are way off the predictions above.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Well, my apologies for posting something I thought 'might' help clear up some of the OP's confusion. Guess it wasn't helpful.

 

Jim

 

You didn't draft that web page, and may well have been an unwitting victim of its misinformation... Somebody else needs to clean it up, asap

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

No need for apology JimF51.  There is much misinformation out there and the problem is not helped by the fact that the OP has mixed up scale and gauge.  And to be honest I have also been guilty of doing this many times in the past and will probably do so again in the future. 

 

As a consequence, all of the narrow and broad gauge modellers are excluded from the standard choices and can only choose "other".  Which probably explains why the current results are way off the predictions above.

Hi Andy

 

Sorry about the narrow gauge bit, I was not used to setting up a poll on here it went live before I could do anything about that as I model in 00n3 myself 

 

Regards

 

Colin

Link to post
Share on other sites

I think part of the confusion is historic from the meaning of 00 or OO having changed more than once.

00 originally referred simply to the gauge  (5/8 inch then 16mm then 16.5mm) extending the existing model engineering gauge series 3,2,1,0, to 00 and later 000. Modellers used it for both 4mm/ft and the correct 3.5mm/ft scale* but as 4mm/ft scale became the far more popular of the two scales in Briitain,  3.5mm/ft on 16.5mm gauge was rechristened as H0 (a term coined by J.N. Maskelyne the editor of Model Railway News) and was eventually adopted worldwide. In Britain OO then came to mean 4mm/ft scale whether that used 16.5mm, 18mm or the correct (to the nearest half millimetre) 19mm gauge.

 

When the BRMSB (AFAIK an initiative led by Maskelyne with the other editors) tried to bring some order and consistency to the smaller scales (O, HO and OO) during the war when manufacturers had been turned to other things, they defined OO as 4mm/ft scale  with two gauges 16.5mm for "standard" OO and 18mm for "scale" OO and it wasn't until about 1950 that "scale" OO was redesignated EM and from then on OO (in Britain) meant the scale/gauge combination of 4mm/ft and 16.5 mm gauge when referring to standard gauge track and rolling stock  but simply the scale when referring to anything else including narrow gauge railways (OOn3, OO9, OOn2 etc) 

 

My own view and I know others will disagree is that, though it was intended by the BRMSB to avoid confusion, separating 18mm gauge from OO with a different name was a mistake as it effectively made the 16.5mm gauge that had been seen as coarse scale OO the "real" OO and gave 18mm gauge a permanent minority status that told the "average" modeller that it wasn't for them.

 

Outside Britain there was also rationalisation. In N. America in the late 1930s  the NMRA defined HO as 3.5mm/ft scale or 1:87.1 with 16.5mm gauge and OO as 4mm/ft scale or 1:76.2 with 19mm gauge now commonly referred to here as American OO but there simply as OO usually with a warning not confuse it with "British OO" .

 

In the rest of Europe models using 16.5mm gauge track had been referred to as both H0 and 00 with some differences of scale (I've seen 1:86, 1:87 and 1:80) but in 1953 a meeting of national associations of model railway clubs settled on H0 with a scale of 1:87 (so very slightly different from N. American HO) and set up a jointly owned  international body to set standards based in Switzerland.

 

 

 

*An even more complex situation grew up around O gauge which can mean one of three scales 1:48 in N. America, 1:43.5 in Britain and some of Europe notably France, and 1:45 in most of Europe particularly Germany

Link to post
Share on other sites

*An even more complex situation grew up around O gauge which can mean one of three scales 1:48 in N. America, 1:43.5 in Britain and some of Europe notably France, and 1:45 in most of Europe particularly Germany

 

Best not even start on all the N gauge variants and 2mm finescale!

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...