Subject:
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Re: More scale questions (Was: Scale of Lego)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains, lugnet.build
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Date:
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Sat, 30 Oct 1999 02:57:10 GMT
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Viewed:
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1231 times
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> Okay, but what does the number 18.83 mean?
It is the track gauge in mm. (4mm scale, 18.83mm track gauge). Fine scale
modeling (and gauge is better to use here than scale, as P4 and S4 are
different!). It comes down to british trains being smaller than
german/american trains. When Bing first introduced 16.5/HO scale, they
couldn't get british outline stuff to fit inside it. So, they fiddled the
scale, to 4mm/ft, and kept the track gauge (so, 16.5/00 scale resulted). This
is the most popular by # british modeling gauge/scale combo. However, as
people started to look more at the accuracy of the models (in fact, pre ww2),
the question came up as to making the right scale/gauge combo. The best all
around (for the manufacturers) answer was still to leave it as 16.5mm gauge,
and 4mm scale. This results in a scale track gauge of around 4 ft. People who
were trying to make model trains, vis toy trains, came up with the idea of
using the same scale (4mm/ft), but increasing the gauge. First it went to 18mm
(BMRS EM), then they went to 18.2mm (*now known as EM*), and in the 60's, S4
and P4 were developed. (S4 is exact scale, no manufacturing tolerances, P4
includes tolerances). Both use a nominal (18.83) track gauge (widened on
curves, the same as full size). Then, to top it all off, the US use 4mm/ft,
19mm track gauge :)
So, as you can see, in the race for the smallest, we ended up with the most
confused.
(1/87, 1/76,1/72 and 1/8"/1ft are all around the same scale...close enough to
fudge somethings, depending on your flexiblity)
James Powell
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