Garden railways

"EM" (18mm gauge) in the UK has been proved to be totally practical to the *average* modeller who wants a finer (track) scale, and would be equally practical for "trainset/toy/beginners", indeed the track/wheel standards now used in mainstream RTR models is so close to that of "EM" except for the wider gauge. The problem is not track/wheel standards but the level of detail that makes something suitable for the "trainset/toy/beginners" market.

Reply to
:Jerry:
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Before that time there were the following wheel standards:

- Hornby Dublo 3 rail. }

- Hornby Dublo 2 rail. } One wheel standard but two systems.

- Trix Twin. Incompatible with anything.

- Trix Fine. Vaguely compatible with BRMSA/HD.

- Tri-ang. Compatible with Tri-ang.

- BMRSA.

Three totally different standards designed to keep customers away from buying the other brands. The last one was an attempt by smaller _manufacturers_ to bring the three together.

Scales:

- HD: 4mm/ft.

- Trix Twin: 1:90 (if you could call anything scale)

- Trix: 3.8mm/ft.

- Tri-ang: sort of 4mm:1ft/compatible size with current production.

- Playcraft: HO. (toy market)

- Rivarossi: 3.8mm/ft. (one try)

- Lima: 1:87. (abandoned)

- Fleischmann: 1:87. (not extended)

Trix tried to find a scale between their old products and 4mm to both retain their existing customer base while gaining HD and Tri-ang customers - rather like a Ford Edsel!

Peco made HO track, finding the right combination of appearance and standards to sell within and outside Britain.

Fast forward 40 years and the British market manufacturers have finally figured that compatible, if not agreed or written wheel/track and coupler standards give them a better share of the market. Perhaps in another 40 years they will figure that the International scale will get more sales.

Regards, Greg.P.

Reply to
Greg Procter

EM (18mm) was simply achieved by pushing propriety wheels out as far as practical on their axles. AFAIK it quickly became 18.2mm. EEM (18.8mm) was achieved using longer axles and rounding 1435mm (4'8

1/2") to the nearest 0.1mm while retaining proprietry wheels profiles, for which there was no real working standard. S4/P4 followed on from EEM, but with prototypic wheel standards/non-standards.

EM might be practical for beginner enthusiasts/average modellers, but the concept of having one gauge for beginners and another for enthusiasts is daft! A beginner should be able to move from toys to modelling seamlessly, without having to ddiscard all that went before, or you're going to lose most of the kids who will keep the hobby going in future decades. Being able to change interests between US/Euro/British models without starting again might be good too.

Greg.P.

Reply to
Greg Procter

Why would they need to do that if both are already using the EM gauge standard?!...

To address your general argument though, I really don't think you have grasped that most people *do not* just collect boxes and than want to run their contents all together on the same 'trainset', most people who do that don't actually care about the interoperability between different scales/makes (being more interested in the individual model aesthetics or value), most people *do actually* try and model - even in it's most basic form - what either does or did happen in the chosen country, region or specific location at a given time so actually have no need for an international standard - manufactures will still make specific models for specific markets due to them being different in design so incorporating different standards is really a non issue for them (besides, many of the internal parts can still be standardised).

Reply to
:Jerry:

[...]

Erm, I don't. Sorry if you get that impression. I just offer the NMRA process as a model. IOW, if consumer-driven standardisation worked in N. America, it should work in the UK. So why don't you have industry-wide standards in the UK? I've indicated that I think it's mostly psychological, not technical. I could go on, but I won't. I think this horse is dead enough, poor thing. ;-)

[...]
Reply to
Wolf K.

But we DO have standards in the UK, indeed some are even drawn from the NMRA, the only problem that has not been solved is the unsolvable one - under-scale (width) RTR "00" track - any solution would actually cause *many more* problems than the *one* it solves! I really don't understand were this myth about the UK not having "industry-wide standards" is coming from, unless you are still reading Railway magazines from the 1960s - much work has been done, 'finescale' 00 track has been available since the 1980s whilst models have run on various manufactures track since the early 1970s - IIRC (Tring-)Hornby were the last to adopt the then standard 'code 100' track in 1970/71, in fact, in the early 1970s I was running a mix of Triang-Hornby, Hornby-Doubo and Trix stock on a layout laid with Peco streamline track in late 1971.

Reply to
:Jerry:

Isn't their "83 Line" range of 'HO' track made to NMRA standards already, it's specifically marketed for the NA market.

Reply to
:Jerry:

RP25 wheels have steamroller tyres, tiny flanges and a narrower back to back.

Reply to
Christopher A. Lee

Erm, I don't say, nor does the NMRA, that its standards should apply worldwide. Why should they? But the consumer-driven process of developing standards worked very well in the USA/Canada. We can be sure that any product from any manufacturer will work on our layouts, which is/was not the case when you buy/bought Hornby, or Maerklin, or any other proprietary "system." IMO, the assumption that the customer should buy from you and you alone is f**king arrogant.

Successful standards are in general directly or indirectly consumer/user driven. If Hornby was a standard in the UK in the past, that's because they made a good product that satisfied their customers. (My brother and I inherited Hornby clockwork trains from my uncles in 1945. Wonderful! Wish i still had them....) The fact that Hornby have had to adapt to other people's standards has come about because the customers wanted both better and more compatible products.

Sorry if I wasn't explicit enough: . The NMRA is developing FS standards because NMRA members want one. Why aren't they just adopting FS standards? Firstly, because the standards are almost entirely British, and therefore don't apply to most of the scales and gauges used here; and secondly, because there are some differences in the specs actually used by FS modellers. The most common one for HO is P87, which AFAIK is based on the same principles as P4, may even be a direct translation.

See above. NMRA looks for overlap in specs, so that any future standard will be written so as to accommodate as many existing practices as possible.

Oh I know there are FS standards. How many times do I have to repeat that? Most of them are British, and so don't apply to most of the scale/gauge combinations not used here. And whatever standards are in use, until the membership votes on them, they aren't NMRA standards. That's all. That doesn't mean you should or shouldn't use them. It's your hobby - enjoy it!

There are two "old technology" electrical standards that are nearly universal now (major exceptions are Maerklin, and O gauge "tinplate, as sold by Lionel, etc.):

-- 12V DC as propulsion current;

-- right hand rail positive from loco driver's POV produces forward motion.

As it happens, these were among the first standards adopted by the NMRA. 6V DC for HO, and 12-18V AC for O, were widely used at the time, but it was realised that a common standard for all scales would benefit everybody. NB that NMRA adopted one existing standard. The same standard was also in use in other parts of the world. The fact that the large US model railroad market adopted it helped make it the worldwide standard - even Hornby came around, eventually. Maerklin did to, in its Hamo and Trix lines, but never really believed in it - which is one of the reasons it's in serious trouble now. Lionel refused to follow NMRA standards, which eventually killed it. It was at one time the largest manufacturer of toy (and some scale) trains in the world. The marque was eventually bought by nostalgic investors, who have found a profitable niche market for Lionel-branded trains.

It doesn't matter what the standards are, so long as they are standards.

Reply to
Wolf K.

[...]

There are now "code 88" wheels available which have narrower tires, but will still run through NMRA turnouts without bumping. If the turnouts have been built to exact NMRA specs, that is. ;-)

The key to RP25 is not the shallow flange, but the fillet between it and the tread. That's what makes them track so well, as was through exhaustive testing in the 1960s, when the RP25 wheel was developed. It was actually based on a a wheel profile designed by Central Valley, who realised they could make a finer looking and better tracking wheel, and still stay within NMRA specs. They called their wheel the CV-2. RP25 has a smaller flange than CV-2.

The narrow back-to-back came about because it enabled check rails to be installed to spec by just butting the rail bases of code 100 flat bottom rail together. That also gave a standard flange-way. The increasing use of smaller rail is one of the factors bringing about a rethink of "ordinary" standards.

HTH

Reply to
Wolf K.

Personally, I don't have a problem with 4mm on 16.5mm gauge track.

[...]
Reply to
Wolf K.

Then it won't be 'Finescale', this was proved 40 years ago when the spec for 18.83 was laid down, to have a 'finescale' standard one needs to start with a clean sheet of paper, about the only common part between the then coarse "00", the better "EM" and the 'Finescale' "P4/S4" standard were the use of 1/8th inch dia' axles.

As for the rest of your 'rant' about standards and the lack of interoperability between makes, all I can say is that you are woefully out of date as to the facts on this side of the 'pond'... :~(

Reply to
:Jerry:

No. This is an argument I have with lots of people. Firstly it ignores the size of the market - yes that does make a difference - work the percentages out, look at the distributions etc. etc. - statistics in action.

Secondly it assumes that the culture in NA is the same as anywhere else - in Europe it patently isn't.

Thirdly it assumes that market driven is the best. That's the sort of problem that gives us MS Windows because the market was manipulated whilst there are infinitely better OS'es around (in the IT business 30+ years, know what I'm talking about).

Fourthly it's a generalisation - you *know* that you can't generalise, just as you can't apply the principles of one market to another where the demographics aren't the same.

Fifthly, the market doesn't always come up with the right answer... ah, I'm not going there... someone will start waffling on about market defined forces always being right by definition and then we're into the sort of stupid arguments that have stultified progress in the computing industry and others for the last umpteen years.

Sorry Wolf, nothing personal, just a bit fed up at the moment.

-- Rod

Reply to
Benny

The horse may be dead, but we keep tripping over it! ;-)

Greg.P.

Reply to
Greg Procter

That hits on the point - you're finally almost down to two standards.

My question, (yes, I know I'm the only one asking it) is why you want Brits to paint yourselves into the corner of having a different standard to the rest of the world?

My impression is totally different. 8^) I'd guess if you counted up every individual on these forums, letter writers to magazines, contributors to the model media and the like you'd have observed 1% of modellers/purchasers/collectors. Add in all model railway club members and you'd be up at about 2%.

Regards, Greg.P.

Reply to
Greg Procter

But we don't and haven't, those who wish to model the prototype in all it's glory can choose to go down either the EM or P4 road, those who don't can stay with 'finescale 00' and as they will not be running non UK prototypes why should they worry about the standards used elsewhere - considering that few in the UK will be running models of non UK prototypes and few non UK modellers will be running UK models on the same layout as their native stock.

That is what I was saying and is what blows your argument out of the window as there is absolutely no reasons for the UK to adopt any other standard than the one(s) they are using - indeed if any manufacture was to try they would suffer the same fate as Trix did back in the

1970s when it would have been time - if such a move to a different standard was ever going to happen - it would have been possible due to the fact that there was only one main RTR manufacture and a couple of 'bit players' in the market, indeed Lima proved this again when they tried to launch British outline 3.5mm scale models in the late 1970s.

Sorry but you just don't seem to understand the UK model railway industry, market and hobby.

Reply to
:Jerry:

:Jerry: wrote: [...]

Good. I'm up to date now, I guess. ;-)

Reply to
Wolf K.

Benny wrote: [...]

Have a beer.

Cheers!

Reply to
Wolf K.

In message , ":Jerry:" writes

I must be one of those few, as I'm in the UK, and I run North American and Australian stock on the same layout as my UK stock.

Reply to
Jane Sullivan

Jane, you are most defiantly one of the few... :~)

BTW, why is it that I always think of Vivian Thomson (of Eastbourne fame) when I see your messages?!....

Reply to
:Jerry:

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