1/76 scale non-British layouts?

[eldomtom2]

Curious to know if this has ever been done, as a sort of reverse-British HO thing. Bonus points if the model is not of a colonial railway that primarily used British-built stock. Obviously Ireland is disqualified.

[doctor quinn]

I’m aware of American OO scale, 1:76th scale on 19mm track which seems to have come about for the same reason as British OO (more space for mechanisms)

 

https://www.nmra.org/oo-scale-sig-page

https://americanootoday.com/?p=796

 

[Nick Holliday]

I seem to recall the MRN featuring a Swiss locomotive or two built to 1:76 scale. That was in the late sixties or early seventies.

[D9020 Nimbus]

I haven't come across any such, but Model Railroad Planning once featured a layout to 1:72 scale — I think the prototype was three foot gauge.

[Jeff Smith]

It's a little surprising that 1/72 wasn't adopted as an all imperial scale as it obviously was for model aircraft kits (not sure when kits to this scale were first introduced).  Gauge would be around 8/10".....

[The Johnster]

ISTR reading somewhere that the first plastic aircraft kits were produced during WW2 to be assembled by servicemen to act as aircraft recognition aids, basic half-fuselage, top & bottom wings, not much detail, but on sprues and to 1/72 scale.  00 had already been establised as a model railway scale at 1/76 by then. 

 

Thinking about 4mm scale non-British layouts, there are some RTR locos that are potentially suitable, such as Bachmann's 04/ROD, and in the same vein Hornby's Stanier 8F and Baccy's WD Austerity, even Ox's Dean Goods at a push.  The various recent RTR industrials were of types exported all over the world as well, principally to the Empire but some European and South American countries as well.  08s and EM1s are suitable for Holland. 

[bécasse]

On 26/04/2022 at 07:29, Nick Holliday said:

I seem to recall the MRN featuring a Swiss locomotive or two built to 1:76 scale. That was in the late sixties or early seventies.

The late Barry Harper, a long time member of The Model Railway Club, used to make very nice 4mm scale models of Swiss prototypes, it would have been his models that you saw featured in Model Railway News.

[Nile]

Anyone using Bachmann 009 WD stock to model a WW1 supply line will be modelling in 1:76 scale in either France or Belgium.

[Nick Holliday]

4 hours ago, bécasse said:

The late Barry Harper, a long time member of The Model Railway Club, used to make very nice 4mm scale models of Swiss prototypes, it would have been his models that you saw featured in Model Railway News.

That’s the name I was searching for.  I recalled the initials BH and Brian Harrap’s name insinuated into my brain, to the exclusion of all others, although I was pretty sure it wasn’t him.  

[Ravenser]

Others will know better , but I think I've heard OO9 is used by some French modellers for 60cm lines 

 

 

[andyman7]

A number of the continental Kitmaster plastic loco kits were made to 00 1:76 4mm scale, a factor that no doubt limited their export potential. The boxes used 00/H0 as a scale descriptor (very common back then) which didn't help. Off the top of my head it affected the SNCF 241P 'Mountain', the DB BR 23 the Swiss Crocodile and the Italian Tank.

[bécasse]

2 hours ago, Ravenser said:

Others will know better , but I think I've heard OO9 is used by some French modellers for 60cm lines 

 

 

Most modelling in OO9 and HOe is to some extent a scale compromise and French (and other continental) modellers are little different from British ones in this respect. In almost all cases though, unless they are modelling a British scene, their scenery will be to 1:87 scale even if some or all of their model trains are closer to 1:76,2 and their track gauge to 1:66,7. Some of the recent very nice models from the trade have been to 1:87, others (from the same manufacturer) closer to 1:76,2, and apparently for exactly the same reason that British OO emerged a century ago, a workable model needed the larger scale!

[The Johnster]

I used the dodge on a 00 club layout that I designed many years ago, an actual prototype location, of scaling the buildings in H0 1/87 for compression purposes.  Nobody ever noticed this cheat, and it was a highly practicable method of fitting the layout to something resembling scale in the available space.  The only obvious discrepancy was in platform height, but since the platform was behind the train from the viewing side, we got away with it...

[Jeff Smith]

1. Well, at least the track would have looked right with the buildings......🙈🙉🙊

[melmerby]

11 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

I used the dodge on a 00 club layout that I designed many years ago, an actual prototype location, of scaling the buildings in H0 1/87 for compression purposes.  Nobody ever noticed this cheat, and it was a highly practicable method of fitting the layout to something resembling scale in the available space.  The only obvious discrepancy was in platform height, but since the platform was behind the train from the viewing side, we got away with it...

Behind that you could have some TT buildings, then N......

Changing the scale of the buildings as you go further into the background helps force perspective

[The Johnster]

3 hours ago, Jeff Smith said:

1. Well, at least the track would have looked right with the buildings......🙈🙉🙊

 

Yes, it was only when a train came along that the illusion was destroyed.  Locos, rolling stock, and signals were to 1/76th scale.

3 hours ago, melmerby said:

Behind that you could have some TT buildings, then N......

Changing the scale of the buildings as you go further into the background helps force perspective

 

I've already done this a bit on Cwmdimbath, where there are N gauge sheep up towards the top of the mountain, and I suppose I could put a couple of H0 sheep in lower down...  Rue d'Etropal of this parish, that nice Simon Dawson bloke, does 3D prints through Shapeways, and included in his range are tapering rows of terraced houses, or the backs, left or right handed, which are 1/76 at one end and 1/148 at the other, and as I have a 1/148 resin terrace I intend to buy one.  I tried to make my own out of card, but it's harder than it looks and it's probably worth stumping up the cash for one of Simons' terraces.

 

This sort of thing is more effective if the viewer is in a fixed postion, and I wander up and down the layout, but there are 2 basic scenes which represent the main operating positions, the station area and the colliery, and while there is a 45 degree curve between them, this is disguised by the scenery, but the disguise is helped by the perspectives and the lighting.  There is a slightly darker area at the curve, and the buildings crowd in to the running line, with a river bridge cameo to draw your eye away from the cheat on the colliery/'country' side.  Or there will be one day, it isn't finished beyond the parapets yet!

Edited April 28, 2022 by The Johnster

[Dermodellbahner]

Users of the Frateschi locos for NZR prototypes uses 4mm to the foot (but it's a whole muddle anyway given the gauge should be 14mm).

K

[Ravenser]

It's not a layout, but apparently someone's doing Melbourne trams in 4mm 

 

Melbourne W6 tram in 4mm

[Pacific231G]

On 27/04/2022 at 18:27, Ravenser said:

Others will know better , but I think I've heard OO9 is used by some French modellers for 60cm lines 

 

 

Yes it is and French themed 009 layouts appear quite regularly in Voie Libre (Loco-Revue's NG offshoot), This is mainly due to the availability of appropriate models from Britain of, for example WD stock that was sold off as war surplus and used very widely in France after WW1 as well as locos such as Baldwins and Alcos.  H0e is more common there because it's easy to get hold of but it represents 750-760 mm gauge which, with one fairly obscure exception (Roquefort-Lencouag in Landes), was never used for light railways in France. 1:76th scale makes 9mm gauge track closer to 600mm and the sort of modellers who care enough to use it are generally perfectly capable of scratchbuildng structures and buildings in the same scale.

 

In reality there were only a few hundred kilometres of public 600mm gauge "light" railways in France (most of them promoted by Paul Decauville), compared with about 16000 kms of metre gauge. Despite that, H0e and 0e   are far more popular modelling choices in France than H0m or 0m probably because 9mm gauge stuff is more widely available than 12mm and 16.5mm is far more widely available than S gauge stuff.  In principle H0i (known as H0f in Germany) using z gauge 6.5mm gauge track would be the "correct" commercially available gauge for 600mm in 1:87 scale but in practice not many modellers use 9mm gauge track to represent both 600mm gauge and metre gauge 

Edited May 12, 2022 by Pacific231G

[HonestTom]

The old Playcraft Decauville is apparently to 1/72 scale, which means that the HO scale driver it comes with looks very peculiar indeed.

[009 micro modeller]

On 27/04/2022 at 18:27, Ravenser said:

Others will know better , but I think I've heard OO9 is used by some French modellers for 60cm lines 

 

 

Yes. I think Charlie Insley’s French layouts are an example of this.

 

On 27/04/2022 at 16:14, Nile said:

Anyone using Bachmann 009 WD stock to model a WW1 supply line will be modelling in 1:76 scale in either France or Belgium.

Prior to the Bachmann stock this is how most people did it anyway. I understand there are a few potential issues with this approach when modelling the connecting standard gauge lines though, depending on which stock is used.

 

Some Japanese H0 is actually 1:80, but representing 3’ 6” so a bit of a complicated situation.

 

Apart from the American 00 on 19mm gauge already mentioned, I’m sure I read somewhere about someone in the UK who (quite a long time ago) did a US Wild West-themed layout based around things like the Triang Davy Crockett loco and appropriate figures (or it may have been more recent and using the Hornby Toy Story loco). I’ve seen people do something similar on narrow gauge with the old Eggerbahn Western loco and the newer Fiddletown & Copperopolis Minitrains stock, though that is a bit closer to being proper H0n30 rather than 009.

[Pacific231G]

10 hours ago, 009 micro modeller said:

Yes. I think Charlie Insley’s French layouts are an example of this.

I’m sure I read somewhere about someone in the UK who (quite a long time ago) did a US Wild West-themed layout based around things like the Triang Davy Crockett loco and appropriate figures (or it may have been more recent and using the Hornby Toy Story loco). I’ve seen people do something similar on narrow gauge with the old Eggerbahn Western loco and the newer Fiddletown & Copperopolis Minitrains stock, though that is a bit closer to being proper H0n30 rather than 009.

Charlie Insley's layouts are indeed an example of this representing a 600mm gauge prototype. 9mm gauge is still not quite right for 600mm/2ft gauge in 1:76 scale but it's a lot less wrong than using H0e to represent that gauge. H0i (or H0f in German) using 6.5mm Z gauge track is better - though its actually a bit narrow- but very few people seem to use it except for things like quarry sidings alongside standard gauge. 

 

I think the Wild West layout you're thinking of was Peter Morris'  HO scale Tombstone and Crockett's Creek. RM's Railway of the month in March 1969 It was interesting because, although at first sight it seemed like a "fun" cowboys and indians layout, it was actually very well though through with a convincing "legend" connecting The Viginia & Truckee RR (and hence the Central Pacific) with the Southern Pacific down the easter side of the Sierra Nevada in California and freight traffic through its three stations operated using the same  card order system that Cliff Young used for his D&RGW layout. 

I think the locos and cars were Rivarossi and Airfix (RTR not kit) and the typically "wild west" buildings were scale kits by Suydam of actual contemporary buildings still preserved. It was a dumb bell layout occupying a 12' x 10' room with a combined fiddle yard representing both ends of the line so with an optional continuous run but normally point to point operation.

 

The old Eggerbahn Western loco always seemed ideal for reproducing scenes from a Spaghetti or German western shot in Almeira Spain. Very much the "wlld west" as legend.  

Edited May 12, 2022 by Pacific231G
added ref to HO scale for clarity

[009 micro modeller]

1 hour ago, Pacific231G said:

The old Eggerbahn Western loco always seemed ideal for reproducing scenes from a Spaghetti or German western shot in Almeira Spain

And the Egger Western loco was almost directly based on them (though obviously adapted from the number 5 loco, in a more practical sense). A film company making European Western films owned part of Eggerbahn when they were first produced: https://www.egger-bahn.de/english/history-01.htm

 

(This is getting slightly off-topic but the link is there for those who want to read it.)

 

The problem with H0f generally seems to be the cost, smaller range of available chassis compared to 9mm gauge, and the difficulty of building and motorising the very small prototypes.

Edited May 12, 2022 by 009 micro modeller

[eldomtom2]

2 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

I think the Wild West layout you're thinking of was Peter Morris'  Tombstone and Crockett's Creek. RM's Railway of the month in March 1969 It was interesting because, although at first sight it seemed like a "fun" cowboys and indians layout, it was actually very well though through with a convincing "legend" connecting The Viginia & Truckee RR (and hence the Central Pacific) with the Southern Pacific down the easter side of the Sierra Nevada in California and freight traffic through its three stations operated using the same  card order system that Cliff Young used for his D&RGW layout.

This claimed to be a 3.5mm scale layout, however.

[Pacific231G]

4 hours ago, eldomtom2 said:

6 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

I think the Wild West layout you're thinking of was Peter Morris'  Tombstone and Crockett's Creek. RM's Railway of the month in March 1969

 

This claimed to be a 3.5mm scale layout, however.

Yes the  T&CCRR was an HO scale layout but it was the answer to your question about a "Wild West" themed layout. I actually wonder what scale the Tri-ang Davy Crocket and coaches and the rest of the Transcontinental  range were. The catalogue current at that time referred to OO/HO and, though I've seen them desctibed elsewhere as OO. I suspect they probably were to something closer to 3.5mm scale. In 4mm scale the far larger North American loading gauge would surely have made them foul on platforms etc. and the typical  Tri-ang customer would certainly have run them alongside British outline stock. It would be interesting to know though and one source does say that the US outline models were notably oversize when put against American modesl. They may have gone for the1:80 scale that Rivaorssi once used for its European outline models . Lines Brothers did try to sell the whole Tri-ang range in N. America and actually described it there as H0 but without much success.

Looking at this clip I'm not seeing the apparent narrow gauge I associate with OO but see what you think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx47M2hwaWE