Gauge 2 LNWR Whale Precursor 4-4-0

[Octoberon]

Assuming that "7mm+" can encompass anything 7mm and larger, here are a few photos of some gauge 2 parts that I've recently acquired, roughly lined up to show what I have of an LNWR Whale Precursor 4-4-0 in the long-forgotten gauge 2 (50.8 mm track gauge, scale 1:22.5). Sadly, I have no frames. Was it meant to be a live steam model? If not, how was it to be powered? I have many more questions than answers. The last photo focuses on the tender wheels, which are just about all I have of the tender. Feel free to comment.

[sir douglas]

well what is the boiler like, does it look like it was made to steam?

[Octoberon]

The boiler is just a simple tube. At present, there are no holes for handrail knobs or washout plugs. The firebox, complete with the firebox door hinge, is attached at the front. An open-topped tin was included with the parts (thinking maybe an intended spirit burner) but it's rather too large to fit anywhere. On the other hand, I do seem to have some parts to make up the inside motion - although I can't fully understand how they'd fit together.

[sncf231e]

It might be parts of a Carson's kit:

Regards

Fred

[Octoberon]

That's a fascinating advert, but the boiler that I have really is just a simple tube, without any closed ends or fitted components, and I think I'm right in saying that the scale is 1:22.5. I'm struggling to convert to an "xx-in." scale, but I don't think it's 7/16.

[sncf231e]

15 hours ago, Octoberon said:

the long-forgotten gauge 2 (50.8 mm track gauge, scale 1:22.5).

There seems to be something wrong with the numbers; a scale of 1:22.5 goes with a gauge of 64 mm, while a gauge of 50.8 goes with a scale of 1:28. The names Gauge 2 and Gauge 3 are by the way used interchangeably depending on a.o. nationality, and define something unknown.

 

See my e-book on gauge and scale: http://sncf231e.nl/gauge-and-scale/

 

Regards

Fred

Edited March 13, 2023 by sncf231e

[Octoberon]

Thanks. I'll take a look shortly. I could well be very wrong. I did some sort of calculation earlier today (I think trying to convert 7/16-in. scale), got a value somewhere near 1:28 and was puzzled.

[Octoberon]

I've taken a good look at your e-book, but I remain confused. I got my initial information from a brief Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_gauge). I also did some research into the locomotive via the LNWR Society. The tender wheels that I have - which are properly fitted on to their axles - demonstrate that the track gauge is wider than the 45 mm standard (I have a little gauge 1 track and those tender wheels don't fit) and information about the prototype tells me that the distance between the centres of the holes in the connecting rods should be 10 feet, which, by my calculation, takes me to 1:22.5 scale.

[sncf231e]

The fixed wheelbase of these locomotives is indeed 10 feet, so if the distance between the centres of the holes in the connecting rods is 135 mm the scale is 1:22.5. But then I wonder what the gauge is; it should be 64 mm if it is correctly modelled (which I do not know of course).

Regards

Fred

[Octoberon]

I'm going to have to measure my connecting rods again and try to be as accurate as possible. In the meantime, please take a look here (https://dccwiki.com/Railroad_modelling_scales) and note the entry for "Wide gauge".

 

Regards,

 

Geoff

[sncf231e]

I took a look and did not see a scale of 1:22.5 in that entry. 

Regards

Fred

[Octoberon]

No, that comes from the Wikipedia page I saw earlier:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_gauge

 

Regards,

 

Geoff

[sncf231e]

Then why should I take a look at that "Wide Gauge" page?

Regards

Fred

[Octoberon]

The Wikipedia "Gauge 2" page says, rightly or wrongly, "standardised in 1909 at 2 in (50.8 mm), a 20% reduction and a change in definition: from mm to inch. It has since fallen into disuse. The gauge was introduced by Märklin at the Leipzig toy fair in 1891. Gauge 2 was equivalent to a 1:22.5 scale."

 

The "Wide Gauge" page says "Called Standard Gauge by Lionel, who trademarked the name. Other manufacturers used the same gauge and called it Wide Gauge. Not widely produced after 1940. Gauge No. 2 using track of gauge 2" (50.8 mm) was one of the standard model gauges in 1909." It refers to a scale of "1:26.59 or 1:28.25".

 

So, still no reference to a 1:22.5 scale on the "Wide Gauge" page, but at least they both mention 50.8 mm gauge. As I've said above, I must measure carefully yet again.

 

Regards,

 

Geoff

 

[Victorian]

Sorry to come late to the topic but I can confirm this was intended to be a steam model.

 

 

It's very similar to Carson's G2 Precursor of which I've never seen another example. Here it is

 

 

This engine is a superb runner with original Smithies boiler, Here's a pic of the frames and cylinder block. You can see similarities, but they are not identical. B-L bought Carson's stock in 1913 and went on offering parts for some of the models. This cylinder block was common to many Carson G1/2 models.

 

 

 

The empty boiler shel simply means that the inner Smithies boiler is missing. Here's what it's like: (After reversing 100 years of crude alterations, this boiler meets modern standards and steams well.)

 

 

I hope you get to complete your model. G2 locos are rare and there's always room for another one!

 

 

[Victorian]

Just reading back about the scale discussion, 2" gauge models were made to 7/16" / ft, which comes out at 1:27.4.

 

The Carson Precursor shown above has a driving wheelbase of 4.45", fairly close to 10' full size on this scale. Carson models were amongst the very few built to actual scale before 1914.

 

The track gauge was always 2", never a metric quivalent, and so you don't have the Gauge 1 45mm / 1 3/4" dichotomy. Which is little comfort since there's no source of G2 track today apart from Lionel, who bizzarrely chose 2" for their 'Hogwarts Express' train set!

 

 

Edited January 30 by Victorian

[Nearholmer]

To confirm what Victorian has said about what might be called “Greenly Gauge No.2”, as opposed to any other Gauge II or 2, some snippets from 1909/10 magazines.

 

This is where he defines the gauge (notice that he starts with 54mm centre-to-centre tinplate track, the historical Gauge II):

 

And this drawing confirms that he was using 7/16”:

 

 

You will notice if you check that his metric and imperial dimensions are “practical equivalents”, not precise equivalents, and you can also see that the wheel thickness in the tank engine drawing doesn’t confirm to the standard he’d himself defined only a few months earlier (not that it matters for practical purposes)!

 

While this gives a nice cross-section of the real boiler, inside the cosmetic shell:

 

 

Edited January 30 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

As a footnote for Fred:

 

This is all making me think that maybe we’ve got the history of dimensions back to front, and that Maerklin started their design process using British Imperial inches.

 

Gauge I: 1.75” + 0.125” = 1.875”, or 47.6mm (nominal 48mm)

 

Gauge 0: 1.25”+0.125” = 1.375”, or 34.9mm (nominal 35mm)

 

Why they would use British Imperial Inches, goodness only knows, but if this is the way they went, it makes sense of the otherwise fairly baffling centre-to-centre dimensions. 
 

Thoughts?

 

Kevin

[goldfish]

11 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

As a footnote for Fred:

 

This is all making me think that maybe we’ve got the history of dimensions back to front, and that Maerklin started their design process using British Imperial inches.

 

Gauge I: 1.75” + 0.125” = 1.875”, or 47.6mm (nominal 48mm)

 

Gauge 0: 1.25”+0.125” = 1.375”, or 34.9mm (nominal 35mm)

 

Why they would use British Imperial Inches, goodness only knows, but if this is the way they went, it makes sense of the otherwise fairly baffling centre-to-centre dimensions. 
 

Thoughts?

 

Kevin

 

The centre to centre dimension is only baffling when viewed from a modern perspective. It should be remembered that Maerklin did not start their design process with a clean sheet, there was already an established product base of floor trains  before Gauges 1 and 2 and to an extent the train came before the track. As the Germans had only recently gone metric so I cannot see there being any great enthusiasm for using another unit of measure. If there was any foreign influence at that time it would be more likely to come from France not Britain.

[Victorian]

I find this a very interesting discussion. I don’t think there’s much evidence of ‘gauges’ in the floor train era and equally, German producers would have  been equally likely to use imperial, or metric before about 1890.

 

However, the fact that continentals used centre to centre measurements seems incontrovertible. Maybe apocryphally or not, this seems to be how American Standard Gauge arose when US producers read about Gauge 2 being 54mm and ended up with 1 1/8” !

So we will never know, but it’s quite likely that G2 started as 2 imperial inches in the modern sense, became 54 mm centre to centre, and was Greenly-used back to 2” (but not 50.8mm !)

 

David

 

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

The centre to centre dimensions are baffling however you look at them, so far as I can work out.

 

Why choose 35mm, 48mm, 54mm, 63mm?

 

There must have been a reason, be it calculating from something, a random set of standard sizes of production machinery, the ages of the designers cousins, or whatever.

 

One thought I’ve expressed before is that they were coincidental, just what happened if you put some cast train wheels onto the then standard-size, mass produced “clockworks”, but I’m not sure we’ll ever know.

 

If someone can tell me definitively why those dimensions, rather than any others, it’ll save me a lot of wasted speculation!

 

PS: Another point I’ve speculated on is whether the centre-to-centre gauges originated not in Imperial inches, but in Zolls. The standardised Zoll is now synonymous with the Imperial Inch, but it wasn’t always thus. I think that until 1954 it was 3.7% shorter, at which date the two were aligned, and that historically there was a plethora of slightly different Zolls in different parts of Germany - what I don’t know is when the standardised Zoll came into being. The historic Fuss (foot) seems to have varied by locality between about 270mm and nearly 400mm, and the number of Zolls per Fuss from ten to twelve, with some places using eleven!! I thought historic English units were strange, but the German ones seem like things invented by Terry Pratchett. 

 

 

 

Edited January 31 by Nearholmer

[sncf231e]

I do not know why 35, 48 and 54 etc. were chosen, but as you can see in the table of the Dutch version of my e-book:

we Dutch have two different words for gauge, depending whether the distance between both rails or between the middle of both rails is meant. So apparantly on the continent the notion of both measurements is/was known/used.

 

Regards

Fred

Dutch version: http://sncf231e.nl/spoorwijdte-en-schaal/

French version: http://sncf231e.nl/ecartements-et-echelles/

German version: http://sncf231e.nl/spur-und-masstab/

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

[goldfish]

There is an interesting article "SIZE, THEN GAUGE, THEN SCALE" by Nicholas Oddy and Stuart Mangleson available through the Glasgow School of Art website that discusses the origins of model railway gauges, complete with references.

https://radar.gsa.ac.uk/5706/

[Nearholmer]

It’s a good article that, one which appeared in the TCS magazine a few years back.

 

Heres the key point for this discussion:

 

”The gauge of this product was entirely arbitrary, set by the width of the mechanism, which was probably designed first, with the body and rail fitted round it”

 

He’s probably right, but if he is, then it just poses the next question: why were the mechanisms however wide they were, and the wheels however wide they were? (Don’t take this too seriously, please)

 

 

[John R Smith]

 

If I may quote from this excellent article, this concluding passage seems to sum up the author's points very well, and is perhaps also the most contentious -

 

"The conclusion here is that the three key factors, size, gauge and scale came in that order. The sizes of toy trains dictated their gauges, which finally set their scales. This is the reverse of what ‘should have happened’ from the scale modeller’s point of view. However, readers of this magazine should think quite the opposite. Toy trains would not have been toy trains had scale ruled and the magnificent leaps of imagination that characterise the best of what we collect been subjugated to some idea of scale prototype representation. That 4mm remains dominant in the UK, despite it being a dog’s breakfast of all three factors, is a small beacon of hope in a world of ‘scale models’ that is increasingly anodyne and un-toy like."

 

A "beacon of hope", indeed? I wonder what the P4 practioners would have to say about that?