Broad gauge model/scale designation

[PhilJ W]

Modelling the broad gauge is becoming increasingly popular, however unlike narrow gauge models there is no easily recognised definition of the scale/gauge ratio used. In narrow gauge modelling expressions such as OO9 or HOm are instantly identifiable by many modellers but broad gauge has to put up with a mouthful such as 'Modelling the Irish railways in OO scale, 21mm gauge'. It would be far easier if a similar form of description to narrow gauge models was applied.

As most narrow gauge genres are designated in the form of scale/gauge with the scale first in capitals followed by a lower case letter or a number following. I would suggest that broad gauge be designated in the form of gauge/scale, for example the 'Irish railways in OO scale 21mm gauge' would become for example 'iOO' the letter 'i' indicating the Irish broad gauge (also Iberia and India?), and perhaps the letter 'w' indicating the GWR 7' gauge. If you have any comments or suggestions please feel free to express them.

[ikcdab]

009, 016.5 HOm etc all seem to be fairly standard - ie they give the scale of the model followed by the gauge it runs on.

So using a similar format why cant you use 0021 (for Irish BG), 0028 (for GWR 7' gauge) etc for 4mm?

049 sounds great for GW BG in 7mm scale...

[Kris]

I think that although the current system has problems that results in very long titles for gauges, if you were to go down a pure code route, it could be even more confusing. In some ways it would be much like text speak, with the reader having to be in the know to understand the code being used, where as the long winded wordy version does allow anyone with a grasp of english to work out what is going on.

[buffalo]

...So using a similar format why cant you use 0021 (for Irish BG), 0028 (for GWR 7' gauge) etc for 4mm?

 

I'm happy to refer to my narrow gauge efforts as H0e because it is an established and well-known term, and is widely used in the RTR market. But, as Simon points out, there's little consistency. I usually have to look up the more obscure scale/gauge terms to discover their meaning

 

Many of the BG models I've seen have are built to much finer standards than 00 so I think you would have difficulty convincing their builders to use a term like 0028 as neither the 00 or the 28 parts describes them correctly. My own little bit of BG (so far just a couple of feet of track and a few wagons) follows this pattern. I suppose we would have to call it something like P4-28.08? Then, for a larger scale we might have S7-49.20. It's worse than text speak. Somehow, I don't see this taking off...

 

Nick

[Guest dilbert]

Well it would be good to see more Broad Gauge - at least in the UK, it gave the GW extra room for manouevre concerning the loading gauge when it came to moving to standard gauge.. Does the nomneclature really matter at this point in time ? - BG4, BG7 etc... I have always liked those layouts running mixed broad/standard gauge services ...dilbert

[Jol Wilkinson]

If you want a distinctive identifier, how about ABDE, "Another Brunel Dead End" Just add 2,3, 4 or 7 to indicate scale.

[buffalo]

Hmmm I think we're as likely to adopt that as anything else...

[Ozexpatriate]

What a fascinating question. It's perfectly futile to attempt an answer of course, so why not?

 

Any attempt to codify this is thwarted by:

• the 00 scale/gauge compromise - causing variant descriptors like P4 and EM
  
• our nonsense scales blending mm and feet,
  
• the substitution of "O" (oh) for "0" (zero) and
  
• differing NEM and NMRA designations and differing NMRA designations
  

I don't think the P4 community would like to switch to "0018.83". That just looks like a number with six significant figures.

 

The problem is best illustrated by the confusion inherent in the existing "accepted" approaches. The following three designations are acceptable representations of a 3.5mm/foot scale with a 9mm gauge:

 

H0e - ~750mm gauge

H0n30 - 30" gauge

H0n2½ - 2½' (30") gauge

 

In this vein, you could attempt something related to the full-size gauge like:

 

00b5¼ - Irish 5'3" gauge (21mm)

00b7 - Brunel's broad gauge (28mm)

 

For this to be effective, the following would have to take over from 009.

 

00n2¼ - 2¼' gauge (9mm)

 

I suppose you could round this up to 00n2½, the closest common gauge being 30" anyway. This is consistent with the following scale/gauge, which is actually recognized!

 

00n3 - 3' gauge (12mm) (Can use H0m track with some lattitude for sleeper spacing)

 

In the US, H0n30 seems to be the winning designation in the magazines (no resorting to special characters). So perhaps the following would be preferable:

 

00b63 - Irish 5'3" gauge (21mm)

00b84 - Brunel's broad gauge (28mm)

00n30 - 009 (9mm)

 

These are probably OK, but to be meaningful, a shift away from "009" terminology would be required.

 

Given the realities of 4mm modelling, the most rational system for 00 would be to use a scale/modelled gauge designation:

 

00/9 (OO9)

00/16.5 (OO)

00/18 (EM)

00/18.83 (P4)

00/21 (Irish)

00/28 (Brunel)

 

Under the circumstances, it's probably the best we could do, and is consistent with the realities of 4mm scale, but it would never take off!

[Guest dilbert]

• the 00 scale/gauge compromise ...

 

"OO Scale'" - the hobby's most famous oxymoron and still in regular use (aaaaaarrrrgggggghhhhhhhh)... dilbert

[Jol Wilkinson]

Ozenpatriate,

 

Why accept that the OO compomise should be allowed to define everything the 4mm modeller does. While mixing metric/imperial is odd, it is simply a different way of saying 1:76.2 (ratio) 4:304.8 (mm) or 0.157:12 (inches).

 

Of the 00? designations that you listed only 009 is historically established. It would be easier (and more accurate) to change that to 4mm9, than get everyone to accept that the inaccurate scale/gauge of "00" should be used to define anything modelled to 4mm:12" scale.

 

To recognise that modelling goes on in other scales, then surely the best designation would be BG followed by the scale indicator, e.g. BG4, BG7.

 

Of course this assumes the 4mm modeller of the Broad Gauge accepts that the broad gauge was 7ft 0 1/4" (but generally accepted as 7'), or hasn't got OO disease and wants the rails spaced at 26.5mm or some other convenient but widely inaccurate distance,

[PhilJ W]

You are forgetting that there is American OO as well using 19mm gauge.>> http://americanoo.blogspot.com

[Jol Wilkinson]

You are forgetting that there is American OO as well using 19mm gauge.>> http://americanoo.blogspot.com

 

So there are two definitions of 00, 4mm scale and 16.5 or 19.0 mm gauge. So even more reason to ignore "00" as the overall descriptor for 4mm models.

[Ozexpatriate]

Of the 00? designations that you listed only 009 is historically established. It would be easier (and more accurate) to change that to 4mm9, than get everyone to accept that the inaccurate scale/gauge of "00" should be used to define anything modelled to 4mm:12" scale.

This works for me equally well:

 

4mm9

4mm16.5

4mm18.83

4mm21 - Irish

4mm28 - Brunel

 

etc.

 

To recognise that modelling goes on in other scales, then surely the best designation would be BG followed by the scale indicator, e.g. BG4, BG7.

I'm not with you on this one. What's BG? Brunel or Irish? Some other like Russian gauge? I'd go with something similar to your first suggestion instead:

 

7mm32

7mm37 - Irish

7mm49 - Brunel

 

It's a very clear designation of scale and gauge which is the key. In the end it's all futile if fun conjecture. We're stuck with the haphazard mess we have inherited.

 

I do find it curious that 7mm modellers are OK with a 32mm gauge (rather than 32.96mm) where P4 seems to insist on four significant figures of precision, but perhaps that's off topic. 10μm is fine machining!

[kipford]

00/18 (EM)

 

EM although originally 18 mm changed to 18.2 more years ago than I remember.

 

I do find it curious that 7mm modellers are OK with a 32mm gauge (rather than 32.96mm) where P4 seems to insist on four significant figures of precision, but perhaps that's off topic. 10μm is fine machining!

 

Not that strange 18.83 is only the nominal dimension, the tolerance you apply to that dimension can be the same as that applied if it were round up to 19 mm.

[ianb3174]

What about a system of Scale/Gauge using metric? 4/16.5 or 7/32 would cover it. I model in P4 (sorry 4/18.83) and 5.5mm scale for Irish 3ft gauge, which would be 5.5n/16.5 in my system (using an 'n' to signify narrow gauge). My Irish broad gauge diorama would be 5.5/28.87. 7/14 for O gauge 2ft prototypes or 4.76/15.62 for Metre gauge in S (1/64). My friends 7/8" models would become 22.22/32 as they run on O gauge track.

But then, what do I know. I just like using accurate gauge so OO, N and even O to a certain extent are compromises. Perhaps the scale ratio should be used? I also dabble in 1/32 (9.5n/32) where 9.5/45 is an accurate 4'8.5".

There are so many combinations of scale and gauge that single letter designations are often misleading.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

...and perhaps the letter 'w' indicating the GWR 7' gauge...

WHO?

[BG John]

and perhaps the letter 'w' indicating the GWR 7' gauge

What about L&SW, Midland, Somerset Central and various others, including piers and industrial lines?

[Pacific231G]

Personally I think it's probably not a good idea to base the description system on the number of millimeters to the foot that the scale is based on as that's mixing metric and imperial units in a way that's only really well understood in the UK (and not in S scale) The letter designation would probably be better as that's well known- 00 is 1:76 in both the UK and USA. and H0 is 1:87 almost everywhere (1:87.1 in the US to be strictly accurate)

 

Some of the scale/gauge descriptors such as 009 have grown out of common usage but others have been defined by various bodies. In their NEM for narrow gauges MOROP simply add m, e, or f (sometimes i) after the scale to indicate metre, 750-760mm and 600mm gauges but these generally use the standard gauge track from a smaller scale (Nm uses Z gauge track, H0m uses 12mm, H0e 9mm, Oe 16.5mm gauge) and cover a range of prototype gauges so it is a compromise: metre gauge in H0 should be 11.5mm not 12mm and H0 is supposed to cover the Russian, Irish and Iberian broad gauges as well as standard gauges.

 

The NMRA standards are more precise but with only three narrow gauges widely used in North America n3 (as in H0n3) n30 and n2 pretty well covered it. A similar system 00n3, TTn3 and so on used to be quite common in Britain and I'm sure I've seen a similar system used for broad gauge with 00b7 clearly referring to Brunel's 7 foot gauge gauge modelled in 1:76 scale. If you followed the logic of the NMRA system you could also have 00b63 for Irish gauge 00b66 for Indian gauge and so on but when you get to the more obscure gauges they probably need to be spelt out.

 

The alternative would be to use the scale letters followed by the gauge in mm. as in 009, 09, O16.5 etc. but I don't think that would be understood outside Britain.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Lets go for a system based on Angstrom unit/Imperial scaling. Very precise and likely to confuse most everyone...