The forerunners of H0/00 gauge

[PaulRhB]

Certainly some of the Marklin stuff was pretty much smaller versions of the generic 0-4-0’s of basic O gauge. 
Here’s my anniversary recreation set with a couple of Fleischmann coaches behind. 

[kevinlms]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I’m coming round to the view that Britain has three national obsessions:

 

- the weather;

 

- television documentaries about the Nazis;

 

- model railway gauge/scale combinations.

 

So, naturally, any discussion will always gravitate to one or more of these.

Don't forget that there is only a small number of posts, until someone mentions Monty Python's Flying Circus.

[sncf231e]

37 minutes ago, PaulRhB said:

Anyhow back towards the topic! 
I’ve got six of the Bing locos but three don’t work. Has anyone got info on replacing springs for these? 

The book by Peter Berg has a chapter "Repairing the clockwork of Bing Table Railway locos". I will try to make a copy and send that with a PM (because of copyright I do not think I can publish it here).

Regards

Fred

 

And also back on topic:

 

[railroadbill]

Brilliant!  Hornby Dublo 3 rail track does look very similar....

[GoingUnderground]

2 hours ago, Il Grifone said:

.....Instead we get the 'glories' of past Italian pop music (best watched with the sound turned off!).

You mean "Premiata Forneria Marconi", better known in the UK as PFM?  A great band.

[RJS1977]

49 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

Don't forget that there is only a small number of posts, until someone mentions Monty Python's Flying Circus.

 

Yes, without that, many a thread would be dead, deceased, fallen off its perch, gone to meet its maker and pining for the fjords...

[PaulRhB]

1 hour ago, sncf231e said:

The book by Peter Berg has a chapter "Repairing the clockwork of Bing Table Railway locos". I will try to make a copy and send that with a PM (because of copyright I do not think I can publish it here).

Regards

Fred

 

And also back on topic:

 

Many thanks for the help Fred  

[Pacific231G]

23 hours ago, Mountain Goat said:

 

19mm gauge using 4mm scale really took off in America for a while and it was known as "American 00".  I know someone who showed me one of the locos and it was massive and heavy!  Makes the Rivarossi H0 Big Boy look small and toylike! I don't really know my American locos, but this was a large one. I seem to think it may be a Baldwin though I would have to ask him. It was around three or four times the weight of a larger 3 rail Dublo loco and double the height and long!  I can see why the USA decided to use H0 instead, and by then 16.5mm gauge was becoming popular so whichever country started using that gauge first made sense at the time for UK and the USA to use it, even if the UK stayed with 4mm scale.

In the 1930s-1950s, when it was quite popular in America, it was just known there as OO.  I think "American OO" was just how it was known in Britain but it is called that there now in order to not confuse it with British OO. I agree that it was probably the extra size over H0 with no particular advantages that made H0 the dominant scale but there are still a few American modellers using it and they have an NMRA SIG. https://www.nmra.org/oo-scale-sig-page 

 

It was though British in origin- any scale that relates imperial full size measures with metric model measures is British in origin and I think this may have come about simply because in Britain rulers are typically marked in both systems.

It seems to have started when those scale modellers who had accepted that the trade had largely adopted 4mm scale for parts, detailing components etc. still wanted to use the appropriae gauge which (to the nearest quarter mil.) was 19mm. That meant that two true scale/gauge combinations were avaialable and both of them migrated to America (remembering that , through the 1930s, O gauge was still the smallest that all but a small minority of modellers were using) 

Things got quite confusing in Britain when, in the 1930s,  00 could mean 3/5 mm/ft  on 16.5mm track, 4mm/ft on 16.5 mm track and 4mm/ft on 18 or 19mm gauge track. In the 1940s the BRMSB originally defined "scale OO " as 4mm/ft on 18mm gauge track having persuaded themselves that the "correct" gauge of 19mm wasn't going to work with scale British locos whereas 18mm would. By then 3.5mm/ft had been firmly esablished as H0 scale in both Britain and America but it's interesting that it was only in the late 1940s early 1950s that the French opted to call 3.5mm/ft H0. Before then it had always been known as 00. 

 

I did find an interesting exchange of letters in MRN. Greenly and Bassett-Lowke had worked together to introduce  small scale model railways into Britain. Greenly later insisted that he'd always based these on 4mm/ft scale but, in a letter, Basset-Lowke  said with equal certainty that their products had been to 3.5mm/ft  scale. I think the truth is that the scale was a lot vaguer than  Greenly later claimed.

There is a bit of a myth about this that, because of our smaller loading gauge, a British outline model in OO (4mm/ft scale) was about  the same size as a European outline model in H0. That may be true when comparing with American H0 but the difference in loading gauge between British and Berne standard, though signiticant,  is nothing like as great as most people think- particularly when it comes to height .  European trains and particularly steam locos seem gigantic to British eyes mainly because station platforms are lower. 

 

 

Edited August 14, 2021 by Pacific231G

[sncf231e]

American H0 and British 00:

American 0 and British 0:

Regards

Fred

[Il Grifone]

On 13/08/2021 at 11:54, Phil Parker said:

 

omis

 

Slightly off topic, but wasn't there a German super railway planned with a wide track gauge? I seem to recall there was a book on the subject. Perhaps you could model that in HO, using P4 track...

 

 

We had one of those from the 1830s on, but they closed it down in 1892!

[Il Grifone]

22 hours ago, GoingUnderground said:

You mean "Premiata Forneria Marconi", better known in the UK as PFM?  A great band.

 

What I had in mind is more like Rita Pavone, Al Bano and Romina Power, Raffaella Carrà to name a few. (There are loads more!)

[GoingUnderground]

3 minutes ago, Il Grifone said:

 

What I had in mind is more like Rita Pavone, Al Bano and Romina Power, Raffaella Carrà to name a few. (There are loads more!)

Thanks, I'll have to see if I can find them as they're all new names to me.

[BernardTPM]

10 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

There is a bit of a myth about this that, because of our smaller loading gauge, a British outline model in OO (4mm/ft scale) was about  the same size as a European outline model in H0. That may be true when comparing with American H0 but the difference in loading gauge between British and Berne standard, though signiticant,  is nothing like as great as most people think- particularly when it comes to height .  European trains and particularly steam locos seem gigantic to British eyes mainly because station platforms are lower. 

The critical difference lies in the lower area. British raised platforms leave little space for cylinders and valve gear. You can have slightly overscale cylinders on Continental H0 (and probably did on commercial offerings at least until the 1960s/70s) but these create clearance problems for UK outlline systems. While fitting motors into bodies are often quoted as the main reason for 00 I would suggest the cylinders and valve gear were at least as significant and a harder problem to solve, particularly where the prototype had outside valve gear. Put the layers of moving parts too close together and the slightest bending out of shape would make everything bind up.

[Il Grifone]

1 hour ago, GoingUnderground said:

Thanks, I'll have to see if I can find them as they're all new names to me.

 

Take my advice, and don't bother! My opinion of course, they are all 'allegedly' popular in Italy.

There's a programme on RAI 1 every evening at 20.30 dedicated to this stuff (one hour ahead of British time of course). It can probably be found online, but you may have to 'make up' a location.

SWMBO keeps insisting on watching it, despite sharing my opinion on Italian music*.

 

* But then, she doesn't like Françoise Hardy which I find inexplicable! ???

 

Raffaella Carrà was the German officer's 'girlfriend' in 'Von Ryan's Express'.

Apparently the final scenes of this were shot in Spain. I would have thought there would have been a gauge problem, as the locomotive is obviously Italian.

 

Back on topic, The big difference between the UK and the Continent is the platform height. The extra width of the Berne gauge goes almost all the way to rail level, which allows space for wider than scale wheels and cylinders/valve gear. Brunel didn't make the most of the broad gauge by keeping the rolling stock width at 10' 6". It did allow broad and narrow gauge trains to share a platform with only three rails of course.

 

[kevinlms]

4 hours ago, sncf231e said:

American H0 and British 00:

American 0 and British 0:

Regards

Fred

Whereas British & US locos are nowhere near the same size, as in this famous comparison photo.

 

https://blog.mechanicallandscapes.com/2015/06/28/409-library-of-congress-images-a-princess-coronation-in-america/

[Mountain Goat]

12 hours ago, sncf231e said:

American H0 and British 00:

American 0 and British 0:

Regards

Fred

 

Isn't American 0 gauge made to a slightly different scale then British 0 gauge is?  

[sncf231e]

Yes, American 0 gauge is made to 1:48 while British 0 gauge is 1:43.5 (7mm scale).

All of this and much more about gauge and scale can be read in my lavishly illustrated e-book on the history of Gauge and Scale which can be read or downloaded at no cost (for free) from my website: http://sncf231e.nl/gauge-and-scale/

 

Regards

Fred

[Pacific231G]

11 hours ago, BernardTPM said:

The critical difference lies in the lower area. British raised platforms leave little space for cylinders and valve gear. You can have slightly overscale cylinders on Continental H0 (and probably did on commercial offerings at least until the 1960s/70s) but these create clearance problems for UK outlline systems. While fitting motors into bodies are often quoted as the main reason for 00 I would suggest the cylinders and valve gear were at least as significant and a harder problem to solve, particularly where the prototype had outside valve gear. Put the layers of moving parts too close together and the slightest bending out of shape would make everything bind up.

That's always been the argument for OO (as it became in Britain). I've not noticed EM gauge modellers having too many problems though it was the reason why the BRMSB opted for 18mm gauge rather than 19mm gauge for "scale OO". It was definitely a problem if you used very wide tyres to get OO models round 12inch curves (as Greenly did) .

However, I wasn't really looking to rehearse those arguments yet again but to challenge the oft repeated claim that Greenly and Bassett Lowke adopted 4mm/ft scale in order make 3.5mm/ft  models imported from Germany about the right size for British prototypes. The truth is that the scales used by manufacturers really were rather vague in the hooby's infancy and, even in the early 1950s when pan European standards were being established, the Germans were arguing that H0 shoud use a scale of 1:80 on 16.5mm gauge track.

 

 

Edited August 14, 2021 by Pacific231G

[BernardTPM]

Yes, I agree the concept of scale for commercial models in those days was somewhat loose, even assuming the model was actually based on a particular prototype. Generic models were very much in the majority. It wasn't until the very late '30s that really recognisable models began to appear.

 

Had 1:80 become standard, then 1:160 N would be exactly half the size of H0, of course. Except for the gauge!

[Il Grifone]

Probably the first R-T-R (British anyway and ignoring Gauge 1 and above as being only for the very well-heeled) with some semblance of reality were Hornby's 4-4-0s of the early thirties. (They did try a Nord Atlantic in the twenties, but without enormous success*). In smaller scales, Trix gave us a reasonable Gresley Pacific (about a near as you can  get on a German '01' chassis) and then Meccano Ltd.  started Hornby Dublo.

 

* It's rather too beefy. The British liveried versions share a complete lack of reality. I suppose 'Caerphilly Castle' was thought more impressive than one of the three Atlantics the GWR had (apparently they were well liked by their crews).

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fagfg-franconville.

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=Chemin+de+fer+du+Nord+4-4-2+31801

Edited August 15, 2021 by Il Grifone

[sncf231e]

1 hour ago, Il Grifone said:

 (They did try a Nord Atlantic in the twenties, but without enormous success*).

The Hornby 4-4-2 was not supposed to be a NORD Atlantic but a NORD Super Pacific and having the correct number for such a locomotive. It was rather successful in France. Hornby also left out an axle when they made in 1939 the streamlined version of the Super Pacific.

 

Regards

Fred

[Il Grifone]

It looks even less like a Pacific! 

I did look for the exact prototype by number but Google failed to come up with anything other than Hornby's product.

 

I wasn't clear (as usual). by "success", I intended the realism of the model, not how many they sold.

 

There are quite a lot left, so it must have sold well.

Edited August 15, 2021 by Il Grifone

[Nearholmer]

On 15/08/2021 at 07:55, Il Grifone said:

Probably the first R-T-R (British anyway and ignoring Gauge 1 and above as being only for the very well-heeled) with some semblance of reality were Hornby's 4-4-0s of the early thirties.

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.

[Johann Marsbar]

On 14/08/2021 at 11:06, Il Grifone said:

 

What I had in mind is more like Rita Pavone, Al Bano and Romina Power, Raffaella Carrà to name a few. (There are loads more!)

 

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!

[GoingUnderground]

On 14/08/2021 at 22:59, Pacific231G said:

...... The truth is that the scales used by manufacturers really were rather vague in the hobby's infancy and, even in the early 1950s when pan European standards were being established, the Germans were arguing that H0 should use a scale of 1:80 on 16.5mm gauge track.

 

On 14/08/2021 at 23:24, BernardTPM said:

Yes, I agree the concept of scale for commercial models in those days was somewhat loose, even assuming the model was actually based on a particular prototype. Generic models were very much in the majority. It wasn't until the very late '30s that really recognisable models began to appear.....

 

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?