BRMSB Standard Dimensions and Ammendments - Download

[roythebus1]

16 hours ago, kevinlms said:

Interesting that appears as 100% metric!

Apart from the unspoken scales of 3.5mm=1ft and 4mm=1ft. 

 

It may be that the Model Railway Club library at Keen house may have the original BRMSB books in stock. The problem is most if not all the active members from the 1940s are now no loger with us to offer advice.

 

[Pacific231G]

3 hours ago, roythebus1 said:

Apart from the unspoken scales of 3.5mm=1ft and 4mm=1ft. 

 

It may be that the Model Railway Club library at Keen house may have the original BRMSB books in stock. The problem is most if not all the active members from the 1940s are now no loger with us to offer advice.

 

Thry're not unspoken in the actual published Standard Dimensions booklet from 1950 and in the summary of gauges they quote the scale to the foot in mm (304.8 mm for the prototype ), the track gauge, and the equivalent prototype gauge in feet  (4.71 ft for the prototype but 4.12 ft for 00 ☹️ !) 

Interestingly, there is a reference letter for each gauge with gaps left for "possible standards for 2mm scale and 'half-one' gauge respectively. 

 

The BRMSB standards were first published in the model railway press with, AFAIK, the MRN publishing the larger scales (O, OF and 1) and the MRC publishing the smaller scales (H0, standard 00 and scale 00 (which became EM) The 1944 MRC table is really just a summary. I have the full 1950 document published for the BRMSB by META  (and available in this topic as a pdf), , which also includes detailed rail sections and wheel profiles but I don't know if the full set of standards were published as a stand alone booklet before that.

The 1950 booklet It does give all the model dimensions in both millimetres and inches but it's pretty clear that almost everyone was using milllimetres for actual modelling and I'm pretty sure the model dimensions were originally expressed in millimetres and then converted to inches. That is the opposite of the NMRA standards which are given first in inches, and presumably calculated that way,  with a conversion to millimetres also available.

 

The title of the BRMSB suggests some kind of official body with its own offices and secretariat.  in reality, it was just an ad hoc committee of editors who apparently met in each others offices. It originally consisted of  J.N.Maskelyne, editor of the MRN who was the chaiir and AFAIK came up with the idea, R.J. Raymond editor of the MRC, and G.H.Lake (BRMSB Secretary) the founder of Railway World and later to be the first editor of Railway Modeller.  I think they brought others on from time to time and consulted both the trade and clubs but didn't AFAIK ever have representatives of the clubs actually on the committee (Given the pre-war disagreements between clubs about standards that was probably wise) 

Edited April 19, 2022 by Pacific231G

[goldfish]

1 hour ago, Pacific231G said:

The title of the BRMSB suggests some kind of official body with its own offices and secretariat.  in reality, it was just an ad hoc committee of editors who apparently met in each others offices. It originally consisted of  J.N.Maskelyne, editor of the MRN who was the chaiir and AFAIK came up with the idea, R.J. Raymond editor of the MRC, and G.H.Lake (BRMSB Secretary) the founder of Railway World and later to be the first editor of Railway Modeller.  I think they brought others on from time to time and consulted both the trade and clubs but didn't AFAIK ever have representatives of the clubs actually on the committee (Given the pre-war disagreements between clubs about standards that was probably wise) 

 

According to the April 1951 MRC the composition of the original Bureau was J.N. Maskeleyne (Chairman), R.J. Raymond , F.W, Chubb, and G.H. Lake (Secretary). F.W. Chubb was the proprietor of MRC, and a strong advocate of 18mm gauge.

 

They later invited G.H. Platt onto the Bureau to represent the Manchester MRC, and M. Longridge to represent the London MRC. Eventually C.W.A. Mitchell was brought on to look after 2mm, F. Kaye to represent the Gauge 1 Association, and W.F. Nicholas of the Merseyside Model Club to look after 18mm gauge. There were also trade representatives and technical advisors.

 

One name that I have never seen linked to either the BRMSB or META is Hornby, which is an interesting omission.

Edited April 19, 2022 by goldfish

[Pacific231G]

2 hours ago, goldfish said:

 

According to the April 1951 MRC the composition of the original Bureau was J.N. Maskeleyne (Chairman), R.J. Raymond , F.W, Chubb, and G.H. Lake (Secretary). F.W. Chubb was the proprietor of MRC, and a strong advocate of 18mm gauge.

 

They later invited G.H. Platt onto the Bureau to represent the Manchester MRC, and M. Longridge to represent the London MRC. Eventually C.W.A. Mitchell was brought on to look after 2mm, F. Kaye to represent the Gauge 1 Association, and W.F. Nicholas of the Merseyside Model Club to look after 18mm gauge. There were also trade representatives and technical advisors.

 

One name that I have never seen linked to either the BRMSB or META is Hornby, which is an interesting omission.

Thanks for that Goldfish it's interesting. I have a fairly complete run of MRNs from around that time but not for MRC and it's not easy to trace the complete story of the "Bureau"  Did they ever come up with standards for 2mm scale? 

Maskelyne had been a strong supporter of 3.5mm scale for OO gauge almost from the start of MRN in 1925 and may have actually coined the term HO but, in Britain at least, it clearly became a losing battle. I'd always assumed that it was he who'd advocated 18mm gauge for "Scale OO" so interesting to hear about Chubb. Michael Longridge had been one of the early proponents of 3.5mm scale so was at odds with Geoffrey Keen who favoured the Greenly compromise but, according to his RM obituary in the March 1958 Railway Modeller, he turned to 18mm gauge at the end of the war and later to 7mm scale.

I'm not sure when standards for EM were effectively taken over by the EMGS who changed a few things - especially the gauge to 18.2mm (as Peter Denny had done on his own almost from the start) There was clearly an idea in the BRMSB that for 4mm scale 16.5mm would be more or less the trainset gauge and 18mm gauge would be the choice for most "serious" modellers. It didn't quite work out like that.

I'm not surprised about Hornby. They'd developed their own standards that suited their primarily  train set market but that would not have been very relevant to the work to develop scale standards by the Bureau. It's quite interesting to see in Peco's manuals for their pre Streamline track systems that their normal standard was BRMSB but they had to offer special instructions for modellers developing from proprietary products to build track for their Hornby Dublo or Trix 

rolling stock. Wrenn (and others) solved the problem by offering their track with closing frogs (also used by John Ahern) and Peco offered instructions for building their points the same way.

There is no doubt though that in 00 at least BRMSB standards were generally adopted by "serious" modellers and those who supplied them.

[Il Grifone]

Peco made their wheels in A/HD (Scale/Dublo) and R/T (Rovex (i.e. Tri-ang)/Trix). The Dublo wheels have rather chunky flanges, but otherwise would run on BRMSB track (Their check gauge is the same at 15mm.) Conversely BRMSB wheels will run on pre-war Dublo track*. Peco (and others) were able to take advantage of this in the sixties by easing the flangeways to make a 'universal' system. Tri-ang had by then refined their wheels a bit and Trix had gone over to Dublo standards (not that they admitted this!).

 

* The passage though pointwork is rather bumpy and the gauge expansion at the tip of the point blades on post-war track (and pre-war electric points*) is just too much for them. The curve starts right at the end of the point but it takes about an inch of straight before the blades. This is quite enough for the gauge to expand sufficiently to exceed the BRMSB maximum (17.5mm - 0.5mm flange + 14.5mm B2B + 2.5mm wheel thickness).

 

* Wartime really as these appeared just before production shut down for the war.

[roythebus1]

A couple of names there I actually met in real life! G.Platt was one of the lading lights in the Manchester MRC back in the day, I'd met hime a couple of times atKeen House over the years. His son Ron (RTH Platt) was an active member of the MRC when I started going there in the early 1960s as on of the LBSCR 00 gauge layout. He went on to become a railway signalling engineer, maybe Grovenor would know if he's still around? Last time I saw him was at Havenstreet about 20 years ago.

The MRC's LBSCR was built to BRMSB standards and a lot of Hornby Dublo stock would run on it without modification, although frowned upon at exhibitions by the layout leaders. the replacement layout New Annington was also built to BRMSB standards except for the branch station which was built to 16.2 gauge by the lat Frank Dyer.

[goldfish]

On 16/04/2022 at 09:24, Krusty said:

Somewhere in my dissolute past I acquired a copy of Model Railways Handbook 7th Edition, compiled by the staff of Model Railway News and published by Percival Marshall & Co Ltd – original cover price 3/6.  It isn't dated, but contains an ad for the September 1963 MRN (and one for Cadets cigarettes). Among the contents is a 10-page chapter on standard dimensions

 

I have secured a copy of Model Railways Handbook 7th Edition, which I never came across at the time, but is a very nostalgic read. Although it implies that the contents of the 1951 Amendments are included in the tables, there is no mention of Unified Gauge O which was supposedly introduced with that amendment. Presumably it had sunk without trace by 1963. it seems I'll have to continue searching for a copy of the 1951 Amendment to discover details of what was proposed.