goldfish

I agree that a shorter wheelbase would be better, but this is the shortest wheelbase ETS do with equally spaced wheels. The wheelbase is 80mm (40 + 40). Ideally it would be 70mm (35 + 35), and ETS would be happy to make one for you, provided you want 100. They do a 0-8-0 chassis with 35mm spaced wheels, which would be perfect if you cut down the chassis to make an 0-6-0. Michael

By coincidence postie delivered me a new ETS drive unit yesterday, for a long planned project. The question is, does a classic Hornby 0-4-0 tank make a convincing 0-6-0? I suspect the answer is that it is not a terribly good 0-4-0, and is just as plausible as an 0-6-0. I normally try not to modify bodies when I convert them, but this one came to me came to me as a repaint with the cylinders already removed. No further modification was required. The long overhang under the cab looks odd, but seems to be a feature of some tank locomotives.

Here is a nice video of the 30th anniversary train running day at the Brighton Toy Museum. Trains start at about 1:50.

The WJ Vintage / Raylo GWR Autocoches appear to be based on GWR Drawing A27, the length of which is 59' 6" (over head stocks?). At a scale 58' 7" over buffers, they are roughly buffer length short of scale.

Sometime ago I acquired a Leeds Nettle that had been cosmetically restored, but was a complete non-runner. The power bogie was missing any current collector, and the brushes and brush holders were also missing. The trailing bogie was also in need of repair. The original intention was to do a full restoration, but it was much easier to fit ETS power and trailing bogies.

Possibly by the uninformed, the pedantic amongst us would point out that a system that uses a base of ten is a decimal system. The metric system is a decimal system that uses the metre, kilogram and second as its base units. It originated as the m.k.s system and was adopted as S.I. Just to confuse matters, the c.g.s. system that uses the centimetre, gram and second as its base units is not metric.

To put the Bing prices into perspective, some of Hornby's 1929 offerings.

I have also read it and found it very interesting.

All the the standard model railway gauges and scales derive from pragmatic decisions taken over a century ago by people wanting to sell more toy trains. Everything that has come since is basically hand waving to justify accepting those arbitrary decisions as being set in stone.

More research has failed come up with anymore information, but I think I have got my head around the Unified 0 Gauge dimensions. I am lacking the full details, but they seem to point to an alternative way of achieving universal points by tweeking the clearances. The over check rails (OC) dimension is determined by the narrowest back to back that you want to accommodate, and so is fixed. To get the required clearance, the check rail on the curved path of the point is set to give the minimum flangeway commensurate with the thickest flange and the radius of the curve. The width of flangeway required by a given flange decreases as the curve radius increases, and so the flangeway width is adjusted accordingly. The width of the flangeway at the frog varies due to the need to maintain OC. The check rail on the straight path of the point would be set to give minimum flangeway width required by the thickest flange. Presumably gauge widening would be advised to give maximum flexibility in setting the flangeway widths. It sounds like an idea that could work, but if it does it obviously never caught on. You would certainly get massive wheel drop.

Doing a little more research, it seems that values for Unified in the table are correct for OC and CR. The size of the flangeway for Unified apparently varied. At 3'3" radius it was 2mm minimum, and 5' radius and over it was 1.6mm minimum. If there were other values I don't know. I have no reference for it, but in 1944 BRMSB set the flangeway at 2.5mm for straight track and 3mm for curved track, but if this was for Fine or Course, again I do not know.

I did realise that the Guild columns were just swapped, my problem is that the flangeway for Unified is less than Fine. The really strange thing is the inclusion of ScaleSeven, which is not 0 gauge and so obviously incompatible.

After an extensive search, the only reference I can find to a BRMSB Unified 0 Gauge Standard is in a Gauge 0 Guild document. It is Data Sheet D1.1.1.1, and it is so obviously wrong that I cannot resist posting a screen shot. I find the idea that Guild Coarse needs narrower flangeways than Guild Fine, and ScaleSeven needs flangeways more than twice the width of Guild Coarse just hilarious. Obviously the Gauge 0 Guild were too busy counting rivets that day to be bothered to proof read their own documents. Seriously though, does anybody know the details of Unified 0 Gauge?

The price of copies of the BRMSB Standard Dimensions is very varied, there was one on Amazon a few months ago for £49. If I could find somebody actually willing to pay that price I would sell my own copy. The link now leads another copy with a starting bid of £7.97 + p&p. I have partially answered my own question. There is a paragraph in the October Model Railway Constructor about the 1951 amendment. "In addition to various corrections to the earlier information published, the sheet also contains a complete set of dimensions for S gauge (3/16in. scale), as well as details of unified gauge O dimensions which are recommended for club and test tracks." Which raises the obvious questions. What is unified gauge O, and what corrections? Not an amendment as such, but in the September1952 Model Railway Constructor they published the BRMSB Standard Dimensions for Stud Contact Electrification in full. I suspect the 1951 amendment wasn't a best seller.

In 1950 the BRMSB Standard Dimensions recommendations were published by META. However it seems that these recommendations were not set in stone, as an Amendment Sheet was published in October 1951. Does anybody have a copy of this, or know what the Amendment Sheet contained? It must been several pages at least, because the original pamphlet cost 1/- and the Amendment Sheet cost 3d. There does not seem to be much information on the BRMSB on line, so I not sure if this was the only amendment, or if there were more. I would be most grateful for any further information about these standards. Michael

At first sight would appear that the use of a Scottish locomotive to represent a French one would be completely wrong, but in fact it does make sense. The Jones Goods 4-6-0 was the basis of the Drummond Castle class locomotives. The North British Locomotive Company built 50 of the Castle Class for Chemins de Fer de l'Etat Francaise in 1911. The error is having NORD on the side of the tender.

Try "Stoneferry engineering. O gauge micro."

There isn't a clear view of the coaches, but they look like preserved Big Four Era stock. Caledonian Railway coaches perhaps? The locomotive is Highland Railway 4F Class ‘Jones Goods’ 4-6-0 No.103, built in 1894, masquerading as a Frenchman.

This one? An Avro Triplane of some sort.

Not so much Hornby Dublo as Hornby Singlo ...

Fred, Thank you for the images, superb. It is nice to see fine and coarse scale being mixed. Regards, Michael

Fred, That 4-4-0 looks superb. Who makes it please, and any chance of of a better picture? regards, Michael

Have you got your units mixed up? According to my shaky maths, a circle with a circumference of 30" has a diameter of 9.5".

My apologies for going off topic. I have come across a piece about the deliberations of the BRMSB in the January 1947 edition of The Model Railways Constructor that suggests that the sequence might better be described as “Gauge first, scale after, and then Gauge again”. It seems that the BRMSB were not taking the prototype as their starting point, instead they took the existing scales as their starting point. The approach appears to been to look at the ratio between the Scale and the Gauge. Taking this approach the prototype has a ratio of 12 to 56.5, or 1:4.71. For practical reasons the BRMSB were working on a ratio of around 1:4.6. With a minimum ratio of 1:4.5, which gives a prototype gauge of 4' 6". The deliberations of the BRMSB clearly deserve to be better known.

Thank you for that Fred, your e-book is an interesting read. The Märklin factory was in Göppingen, which was then in the Kingdom of Württemberg, I am not they would have appreciated being called Bavarians. Michael