100 years of OO gauge 2022

[PaulRhB]

 

November 2022 marks 100 years since the first models defined as 4mm OO scale ready to run trains were offered by the German firm of Bing. 

Several manufacturers had offered small scale ‘Table Railways’ to a variety of scales and sizes in the early 1900’s. Schoenner and Carette had offered sets running on 22mm gauge. Marklin were also producing trains to 26mm gauge. Bing had offered various gauges from a static 2mm scale set through to working 25 and 28mm gauges.

 

Bing Table Railway, (or Tischbahn), was the idea of Henry Greenly and Bassett-Lowke in 1914 possibly based on some small models built by Greenly’s apprentice Adrian Brough. 
 

Advert from December 1922

 

It took until 1922 for it to become a reality and was reviewed in September 1922 and appeared in the Bassett-Lowke November catalogue. The models were made for them by Bing Werke. 

 

 

The locos were generic 2.4.0 tanks and were initially clockwork  with electric mechanisms following in 1924. LNER, GWR, Midland and LNWR liveries were produced along with an American version which had a cowcatcher added. 

 

A tender version was also offered. 
 

 

Rolling stock consisted of coaches & brakes for each livery and three different wagons, vans, opens and a tank wagon. 
 

 

 

A station, signalbox, engine shed, and tunnel plus signals, level xing and turntable plus two and third rail track were produced. 

 

 

More information in ‘Bings Table Railway’ by Jeff Carpenter. 

 

 

 

 

 

[F-UnitMad]

4mm scale models on 16.5mm track??!!??

 

It's just a fad, it'll never catch on.... 🙄

[sncf231e]

Note that OO gauge is standardised as 0.65 inch or 16.5 mm while the gauge of this BING table train was 5/8 Inch or 16 mm. So it was called OO but still different from what we know as OO now.

 

But they were nice trains for use on a table: 

 

 

Regards

Fred

 

[Il Grifone]

With wheels like that, they were lucky to get away with only 4mm. I believe the gauge was actually 16mm (Half-0)? though it would not have been critical.

Rather a large premium for an electric motor!

 

Edit

Beaten to it - it wouldn't save for some reason. (Computer constipation?)

 

Edited November 2, 2022 by Il Grifone

[phil_sutters]

I had a Bing 00 passenger train and a goods train with 2-4-0 tanks in red & green - an oval of track and a station, back in the 1950s.

[PaulRhB]

As Fred said though they were the first referred to as OO gauge by the manufacturer 😉

[Il Grifone]

00 does rather follow on the decreasing numerical scales. 000 followed in 1924.

 

'Scale' was at best approximate....

[PaulRhB]

7 minutes ago, Il Grifone said:

00 does rather follow on the decreasing numerical scales. 000 followed in 1924.

 

'Scale' was at best approximate....

Yes but it’s nice to celebrate a minor milestone in the hobby just to show how far it has come. Various critics have said the locos were poor because they were generic but they have a certain charm like the Hornby 0.4.0 O gauge tanks and a modern version would make rather a nice desktop retro set. 
I’m working on motorising a battery chassis to fit under some damaged coaches and wagons rather than risking the clockwork on mine as several are already broken. 
 

[phil_sutters]

There is a good selection of Bing train sets in the Brighton Toy and Model Museum

Edited November 2, 2022 by phil_sutters

[Michael Hodgson]

I think it's fair to say the trade has improved the level of accuracy of its offerings since then 😀

What improvements can we expect over the next century?

[GoingUnderground]

And just to add to the havoc and confusion, Maerklin used to call their 3.5mm models 00, and only changed to using H0 in the late 1940s.

 

And I think the USA had OO, but theirs ran on 19mm gauge track.

[sncf231e]

1 hour ago, GoingUnderground said:

And just to add to the havoc and confusion

There is a free to download e-book on Gauge and Scale which clearly explains all of this:

http://sncf231e.nl/gauge-and-scale/

Regards

Fred

 

[Nearholmer]

Some looking back and down on this stuff as primitive within this thread, but its worth thinking that in 1922 it wasnt primitive at all, it was a very good, and rather advanced "technical toy", where the miniaturisation of electric drives especially was at the edge of what was practical. Try finding another application of electric motors that small 100 years ago, and you will have to work quite hard at it - I'm quite into the history of electrical gubbins, and I can't think of a widespread application (was there some military application during WW1 that is escaping me?).

[Colin_McLeod]

15 hours ago, GoingUnderground said:

And I think the USA had OO, but theirs ran on 19mm gauge track.

 

Now if only that had been adopted in the British Isles. A scale 4ft 9in.

[BernardTPM]

1 hour ago, Colin_McLeod said:

Now if only that had been adopted in the British Isles. A scale 4ft 9in.

Which, with the commercial wheel standards of the time would have probably meant locos around 15% too wide. Remember the Jouef Class 40? And that was on 16.5mm gauge!

Edited November 3, 2022 by BernardTPM

[PaulRhB]

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Some looking back and down on this stuff as primitive within this thread, but its worth thinking that in 1922 it wasnt primitive at all, it was a very good, and rather advanced "technical toy", where the miniaturisation of electric drives especially was at the edge of what was practical. Try finding another application of electric motors that small 100 years ago, and you will have to work quite hard at it - I'm quite into the history of electrical gubbins, and I can't think of a widespread application (was there some military application during WW1 that is escaping me?).

Yes look at the T gauge and Z compromises we accept these days to get the ultimate in miniaturisation 😆

[GoingUnderground]

18 hours ago, sncf231e said:

There is a free to download e-book on Gauge and Scale which clearly explains all of this:

http://sncf231e.nl/gauge-and-scale/

Regards

Fred

 

 

Apologies for telling you things that you already know, but if you ever revise your booklet, you might like to add in the rather odd scale that British Trix used. In their sales literature it was described as OO, and the track was 16.5mm same as its German counterpart, but as more realistic locos, coaches and wagons were introduced were built to an intermediate scale of approximately 3.8mm to the foot, 1:80, neither true OO nor true H0. The exceptions were the Bo-Bo AL1/Class 81, which was't designed by British Trix but came into their range when Ernest Rozsa joined their company, the A3 Pacific "Flying Scotsman", the A4 Pacific "Mallard", and the A2 Pacific "A.H. Peppercorn".  The result was that the 3.8mm scale British Trix locos and coaches were visibly smaller than the rival products made by Hornby Dublo and, from 1952, Rovex under the name Triang Railways. This, and the fact that British Trix retained AC power and very coarse scale wheels and track into the mid 1950s, had a significant impact on the ability of British Trix to compete in the UK market.

 

In the UK, there is no "coupling salad" in OO. Through the 1950s and 1960s there were two rival systems, the Peco coupling, used by both Hornby Dublo and British Trix, and from 1952  there was another coupling system introdiced by a new entrant into the market, Rovex trading as Triang Railways. In 1959 Rovex introduced their Tensionlock (or Triang Mk3) coupling. The failure of Hornby Dublo in 1964 and their acquisition by Triang, coupled with the fading away of British Trix in the early 1970s, left Rovex, who were trading under the name Hornby Railways from 1972, as the dominant player in the UK and their Tensionlock coupling as the de facto "standard" British coupling for ready-to-run models. For some time before Trix ceased trading their models were made so that owners could fit the Triang Tensionlock instead of the Peco type Trix coupling. G&R Wrenn, who became a subsidiary of Triang in the mid 1960s and started reissuing the former Hornby Dublo models altered the tooling so that they also used the Tensionlock but with the option of substituting Hornby Dublo couplings if the owner so desired.

 

Slimmed down versions of the Tensionlock were subsequently introduced by competitors, notably Kader trading as Bachmann Branchline in the UK, but they are still recognisable as the 1959 Tensionlock design. Hornby Railways also came to use this slimmed down version as it is less visually intrusive than the original Tensionlock design.

 

You only briefly touch on track, which I find surprising given that you mention the breakdown in compatibility at OO/H0 level when today there are two competing methods of delivering power to locos: 3 rail, nowadays in the form of stud contact, and 2 rail, whilst Trix both in the UK and Germany until the 1960s used their hybrid "twin" system which allowed 2 trains to run on track with a centre conductor rail by isolating the running rails from each other and using the centre rail as the common return. In the UK 3 rail died with the end of Hornby Dublo although it does still have a following in Hornby Dublo enthusiast circles, and those who model mainland European railways using Maerklin locos and track, a very specialist niche of the UK hobby. Its passing is so complete here that most UK modellers, including myself at one stage, don't realise that it is still very popular and readily available to buy from new in those countries where Maerklin is the market leader with manufacturers making both 2 rail and 3 rail versions of their locos.

 

But thank you for the link, it made interesting reading.

 

 

Edited November 3, 2022 by GoingUnderground

[JohnR]

The 25/- of the basic set in 1922 equates to £55 in todays money. 

[Nearholmer]

I'd definitely buy one, or three, for my nephew you understand, at that price.

[sncf231e]

2 hours ago, GoingUnderground said:

 

Apologies for telling you things that you already know, but if you ever revise your booklet, you might like to add....

 

 

 

But thank you for the link, it made interesting reading.

 

 

Thank you! I have saved your text to use when I make an update of the e-book.

Regards

Fred

[t-b-g]

Did the LNER and LMS liveried models appear before the grouping? That would be bang up to date "modern image" modelling!

 

Fascinating stuff and many thanks for posting it.

[PaulRhB]

1 hour ago, t-b-g said:

Did the LNER and LMS liveried models appear before the grouping? That would be bang up to date "modern image" modelling!

 

Fascinating stuff and many thanks for posting it.

The early ones were the LNWR and Midland red and after the grouping they changed to LNER, LMS & GWR. There are fourteen variations so mine are mostly 1924 released post grouping models apart from the three LNWR ones I have but I didn’t think just black engines would be so interesting. As the range only lasted ten years the early 1922 - 23 versions are even rarer or very expensive and I haven’t found a MR tank yet. 

[GoingUnderground]

I'm going to play "Devil's Advocate", so be warned, ymost of you may well disagree with all of the following observations.

 

What no one has pointed out is that in the beginning it was 00 (Zero-Zero) to indicate that it was approximately half the size of 0 (zero) gauge, which itself was so named to distinguish it from the larger Gauge 1 and its even bigger sibling Gauge 2. I believe it was Maerklin who first created the gauge numbering of 2 - 1 - 0 to distinguish between the progressively smaller scales.

 

The first 1922 locos appear to me to be generic designs rather than models of specific prototypes and that at least for me makes the scale actually used a bit academic - how can you scale something that doesn't exist. The German language version of Wikipedia makes interesting reading describing the Bing 1922 models as 00 (Zero Zero), not OO (Oh Oh), being based on half the scale of gauge 0 (Zero) with the models being "strongly focussed on the English market" despite the Bing company being based in Nuremburg.

 

So in that sense, there is a case for saying that 1922 was the beginning of not of 4mm scale OO (Oh Oh) gauge but of sub-0 gauge models in general, and 3.5mm scale H0 gauge in particular.

 

I have a copy of the Trix Twin Railway "Permanent Way Manual" 14th edition dated January 1952 originally written by Henry Greenly in 1937. You might find this section on page 9 relevant: 

 

"SCALE AND GAUGE

The gauge of the railway is 5/8inch (16m/m) and is commonly known as "00". The scale, which is that originally determined by the writer, [meaning Greenly himself] for this gauge is approximately just over one-eightieth  (1/80) of a full-sized railway, the measurements of the details being, as far as practicable, made in this proportion."

 

Please note, the book does use "00" not "OO".

 

Taking Greenly literally, the relationship between scale and gauge is already broken as 5/8 or 16mm track gauge is 1/90 but he describes the scale as 1/80.

 

It could be argued that 1/80 is closer to 1/76 OO than 1/87 H0, or that Greenly was only talking about the British Trix system with its 3.8mm scale, which is 1/80, but he seems to be taking credit for creating this scale and gauge and it could be argued that he was referring back to his involvement in the 1922 launch.

 

The Trix system was arguably the descendant of the Bing 1922 system as Stephan Bing was also involved in the German Trix company who launched 00 proper in Europe in Spring 1935, shortly before Maerklin announced their 00 models. The Bing family lost control of the German Trix company in the mid 1930s and Bing emigrated to the UK in 1938 where he became involved in the British Trix company which was closely tied to Bassett Lowke at the time through the Bassett Lowke Twin Table Railway which historically was the German Trix system with UK outline bodyshells. 

 

As Fred has pointed out in his booklet, the actual scale used for 00 varied between manufacturers and over time, eventually settling on 1:87 which itself is based on the scale of 16.5 mm gauge track, and changing the nomenclature to H0 which more accurately describes it as "Half 0" in German, to distinguish it from the conflicting UK and US use of OO in connection with 4mm scale.

 

Nearholmer has pointed out in past posts on RMWeb that OO existed in various forms prior to the launch of Hornby Dublo in 1938, but personally I would regard that as the launch of OO proper, i.e. it's adoption by a major toy maker of 4mm scale on 16.5mm track.

 

I don't want to reopen a lengthy debate over the origins of OO (4mm on 16.5 track), that's water under the bridge, but wanted to raise information from relevant sources that others may not have seen.

 

 

 

[PaulRhB]

59 minutes ago, GoingUnderground said:

The gauge of the railway is 5/8inch (16m/m) and is commonly known as "00".

and hence the title of this is 00 / OO gauge not scale 😉 The use of O vs 0 is just typos it’s known as Oh-Oh because the tradition has become to use letters Oh-Oh and Aitch-O because they roll off the tongue easier than Zero Zero or Aitch Zero, (and I have to use the phonetic alphabet and numbers in the day job)

 

59 minutes ago, GoingUnderground said:

there is a case for saying that 1922 was the beginning of not of 4mm scale OO (Oh Oh) gauge but of sub-0 gauge models in general, and 3.5mm scale H0 gauge in particular.

The variety of sub 0 gauge models pre 1922 was quite big but the first reference to a range of models as 00/OO gauge was in relation to this product by Greenly as Gauge no. 00 Table Railway. That’s in his 1924 book and as the designer of it too that’s good enough for me as the start of 00, later referred to as OO gauge. 
 

If you start on scale then there’s a huge mix to untangle. 
 

59 minutes ago, GoingUnderground said:

The first 1922 locos appear to me to be generic designs rather than models of specific prototypes

They were allegedly based on the LNWR Chopper tanks, middle image modified purely by reducing the boiler size and dropping it, this was raised to accommodate the clockwork. 

Edited November 3, 2022 by PaulRhB

[phil_sutters]

The Brighton Toy & Model Museum has a large range of tinplate toys and models from manufacturers in a variety of countries - some in static cases and others on layout displays, some of which can be operated.

These are some examples additional to the Bings above