Does anybody know Iain Rice?

4.4mm,

Nah, just HO mono-rail....

In message , ":::Jerry::::" writes

Surely there's a 1 missing here: 14.4 mm seems much more reasonable for a HO back-to-back.

,

Never! Duh... :~)

Terry,

Can we just emphasise that your statement is only true in the context of 4mm scale 00 gauge wheels with varying standards. For those of us who model in scale/gauge standards where the wheel standards are closely controlled, measuring back to back gauge is the simplest and quickest way of checking whether wheels are properly in gauge. Measuring check gauge (front to back of flanges) and gauge (front to front of flanges) is not easy if you want complete accuracy.

Jim.

The easiest of all is to use the NMRA gauge, which has a go/no go gauge for wheelsets (back-to-back, check gauge, and RP25 flanges), and a go/no go slot for individual wheels. Works very well. However, OO wheels and older European HO wheels are all over the place. Bah!

I did get some replacement wheels for the Lima GWR diesel cars, lovely wheels, within NMRA standards, but they cost more than the car. I routinely replace older wheels on Roco, Liliput, etc, even if the diameter isn't spot on. I'd rather have a wheel that's a millimeter off either way than one that chokes on the frogs (crossings) on my handbuilt turnouts.

NB that NMRA recommends using the same wheeltread and flange for 16.5 through 19mm gauges. They also have a proposed finescale standard, with narrower wheels, finer flanges, and wider back-to-back and check-gauge, along with smaller min/max track gauge difference, etc. It's an RP at present IIRC.

And Terry, don't bother posting your usual rant against NMRA standards - they work.

HTH

On 19/12/2005 16:23, Wolf Kirchmeir said,

I think he has disappeared!

"John Turner" wrote

They in fact had an email address for contacting the Head 'Itter for some issues recently: it's now gone again, at least from the masthead. Too many complaints about late publication??? Mind you. if BT were to remove every phone line from Didcot it would take the world months to notice, so dull is the town... (the steam museum is the best thing about it).

Tony Clarke

":::Jerry::::" wrote

Out of curiosity, how many WERE published? I've got issues 1 - 13 from some rummage box. possibly even one of the modelling supplements though I didn't think it was up to much. Good source of prototype detail pics.

I'm still after MRJs Nos 0, 1, 7, 9, 11, 18, 25, 72, 84, 86-91,

93 and 94 to complete my set.

Tony Clarke

IIRC about 26 - including issue the special making the end of the Deltic's.

"David Smith" wrote

I have to ask: if you know the back-to-back measurement is iffy, why not get an appropriate gauge block and un-iffy it? The point of a standard is that everything conforms to it. That way, stuff works. It's bad enough that

00 is "wrong" without 00 users trying to vindicate yet more deviation through manufacturing sloppiness. (Hornby are reputedly no better than Bachmann, as well as being the progenitor of 16.5mm track with 4mm scale, which has somehow become a "standard" through their boneheadness as a monopoly supplier for too many years).

This little squib from an EM modeller, by the way. We know our standard measurements: far from being particularly "finescale", they're consistent and adequate-to-generous and we all own a little block of brass that costs about three quid from the EMGS stand. Shove it between the wheels: if it fits, the thing goes. Occam's Razor refers. Oddly enough, you can even make modern Hornby wheels - at least, the rolling-stock ones - run to EM by squeezing the said bit of brass in the gap and performing a quick circumcision on the resulting projecting bit of axle insulation that otherwise foul Romford pinpoint bearings ever so slightly. How hard is that?

Tony Clarke, sticking to 16.5 btb

"David Smith" wrote

As they should, since that's been EM standard flangeway distance for quite some years (EM having been around "officially" for 50 years and informally for longer). 18.2 gauge, 1mm flangeways, equals 16.2mm flangeway clearance, standard b2b is set at 16.5mm. Result: happiness.

There are theoretical advantages in narrowing the flangeway anyway as it makes for less gruesome crossings at turnouts since the wheels don't have to bridge such chasms (derailing, poor pickup) at the frog. But then being bodgers of necessity, we EMs have to take care of our own stock rather than assume that a contraption assembled in China and shoved in a box is in any way fit for purpose the first time out. You RTR types of course insist only on buying the actual model you've seen taken out of its box and run on standard track, not buying on price from a mail order merchant?

Rice is a wise man, though, and I've learnt much from his books, both on track and on locos. To make the afflicted feel better, I braved Scaleforum this year and saw P4 running no better than some RTR, with trains being banked by the Great Finger In The Sky. The smoothest running seen lately has been East Lynn at the Ipswich show, which may suggest that S-scale is the true faith - the bigger the better? Or just endless attention to detail and mechanical first principles?

Tony Clarke

Not 100% happiness. There is a possible small interference of 0.05mm between wheel check gauge and track check gauge for many 00 /H0 wheels. The 00 check gauge should be 15.2mm. Usually a 0.05mm interference is OK because good flange profiles can handle the difference. If you make the 00 track gauge 16.25mm minimum then you get the correct wheel rail relationship. My caculations indicate it is not practicle to use 1mm flange ways in K crossings and be within the EM standard.

I am not surprised that some P4 layouts have trouble. The P4 standard has a problem with crossings according to my maths. The check face to check face dimension should be larger to make things practical. The EM standard could also use some fine tuning as well. There is no need to have a different check gauge for wheels and track.

Terry Flynn

HO wagon weight and locomotive tractive effort estimates

DC control circuit diagrams

HO scale track standards

Tony,

I think you'll find that most, if not all, of the locos on Trevor Charlton's layout have split axle/frame pickup which works extremely well - as it does also on 2mm scale layouts. UK S scale also uses exact scale track and wheel standards which work very well.

Trevor also believes in 'tuning' his layouts which means adjusting, repairing or replacing anything causing the slightest problem. He did it on Wicken, his previous layout, and that ran faultlessly for years. I took his lead and 'tuned' my S scale layout way back in the

80s before an exhibition at Dunstable. I had a week off work beforehand and spent every day operating the layout for several hours per day, and picking up on every small fault I found. The result was that I ran the layout for hours at a time at the exhibition with no help from hands from the sky, and whenever help was necessary it was for a fault due to operator error.

Jim.

In message , Tony Clarke writes

The current Hornby company are no more the progenitor of 16.5 mm track with 4 mm scale than you or I are.

I think you are confusing them with Hornby-Dublo (made by Meccano Ltd., which went bust many many years ago). And I'm not convinced that they were the progenitors, either.

On 19/12/2005 22:05, Tony Clarke said,

Dull? DULL?? There's some very interesting cooling towers there ;-)

Jim -

Senior moment?

Nunn not Charlton :-)

I don't think Meccano Ltd were the progenitors of 00 as we know it, but there is a feeling that when they re-started production after WW2 using the pre-war 16.5mm gauge tooling, they effectively scuppered the efforts of the railway modelling inductry to improve the 4mm scale/gauge standards. EM was the result of the immediate post war efforts to improve the breed, but this standard was relegated to a minority interest when other mass manufacturers copied Hornby Dublo's lead.

Jim.

...and thus allowed their products to be used world-wide (ie. main land Europe and North America etc.) [1] on the same 16.5mm track gauge for the more widely used HO (3.5mm / 12inch) scale, what I can't understand is why we leapt to the OO (4mm / 12inch) scale in the first place and more so kept to it after the war - other than re using the pre war tooling when materials were in short supply!

[1] remember that the country was in 'export mode', from cars through to toys.

In message , ":::Jerry::::" writes

Received wisdom is that it had to do with available electric motors in the 1930s being small enough for most US and Continental prototypes but too big for the average UK loco. Hence the scale was pushed from 3.5 to

4 to allow the motors to fit.

If it weren't for that short-termist decision (and Henry Greenly is oft implicated in this) we would now be modelling HO and P87, and OO wouldn't exist.