Deliberately Old-Fashioned 0-Gauge, Chapter 2

[goldfish]

19 hours ago, Mark Carne said:

And to drag this back to O gauge, a pet point of mine, is there are 3 basic standards in O gauge ( I know I will be bombarded with numerous others, but in this discussion, we are talking from a commercial, historical, pre 1970 perspective), tinplate, coarse and fine, and the O gauge standard and dimensions here are those for O gauge railways using tinplate track. Trying to run coarse standard wheels on tinplate track is about as successful as running them on finescale track, but people persist in confusing the two standards and thinking that they are the same and totally compatible, they are not.

 

There is no reason for coarse standard wheels not to run on tinplate track, provided the track is of a good standard. Modern finescale wheels will happily run on good quality tinplate track, I have spent hours running them on Merkur track. Tinplate points can be an issue because the manufacturing process results in a wide variation in the gauge through the points. The important dimension for successful running on loose laid poor quality tinplate track is actually tire width, not flange depth.

[sncf231e]

1 hour ago, goldfish said:

 

points can be an issue 

Just refrain from points and you can run what you want  😉

Regards

Fred

[goldfish]

55 minutes ago, sncf231e said:

Just refrain from points and you can run what you want

 

Exactly... As modern plastic fine scale is lighter and more free running than coarse scale it is ideal for running behind weak clockwork. Although the very idea will raise more than a few hackles.

[Hroth]

3 hours ago, sncf231e said:

Just refrain from points and you can run what you want  😉

Regards

Fred

 

I've got a DoY and its nice to see yours running with a tender!

Mine used to belong to my uncle and is as dead as a dodo, with a bust spring...

It doesn't look as good either, with a very faded finish.

 

[Lacathedrale]

23 hours ago, sncf231e said:

Just refrain from points and you can run what you want  😉

Regards

Fred

 

As I said, your channel provides endless hours of entertainment and I'm very grateful for sharing it. I'm mostly going for live steam G1 myself with a provision for non-R/C, so while I'm not looking to build the approach to York, there is a need to have some pointwork on the main circuit to traverse from steaming bays to the different running lines, and to enter passing loops.

 

Part of me is wondering if a cantilevered, lower level plain track loop of G1/G0 might be a reasonable compromise in due course? Anyway, back to the Old Fashioned 0 Gauge discussion - I just wanted to highlight how influential your content is :)

[John R Smith]

 Looking yet again at this question of standards in coarse scale O Gauge - browsing through my stash of ancient Model Railway News issues last night, I noticed this Bassett-Lowke advert -

 

 

As you can see, this is from the MRN for January 1957. These wheelsets were being offered in coarse or fine scale, and the coarse scale B to B was 27 mm -

 

 

So even as late as 1957, the year after the Gauge O Guild was established by Jack Ray and friends, as far as B-L were concerned coarse scale wheels were part of an unchanging world. Considering the vast amount of legacy O Gauge equipment and layouts around at the time, this was sound practice.

 

In that case why did the GOG settle on 28 mm B to B for their own set of coarse scale standards, I wonder?

 

 

[Lacathedrale]

I came back from the Sussex vintage train convention with this, “for Daughter” ;)

[Nearholmer]

Definitely a good start, if the spring isn’t too tired.

 

Now you can get rid of all those other trains you’ve mentioned, forget finescale, and begin enjoying yourself.

[Annie]

41 minutes ago, Lacathedrale said:

I came back from the Sussex vintage train convention with this, “for Daughter” ;)

Nice one.  I have one of those, but mine is a little more playworn than your nice shiny one.  If the spring is good they are excellent runners and a lot of fun.

[Lacathedrale]

I bought two wagons (NE flat, NE 5-plank) and the BR shunter, but then found a carrier bag full of track including a pair of points, so went back and picked up four teak 4w coaches (brake-comp-comp-brake)  and a tender variant of the loco in LNER apple green.

 

Unfortunately the track is really a bit knackered. The 1' diameter curves put the willies up both locos so I'll need an alternative solution to what I got, though - ideally something that doesn't give everyone tetanus...

 

 

[John R Smith]

 

I think you will find that the curves are one foot radius, which was the standard Hornby train set issue. The little 0-4-0 locos should be OK with that, perhaps you could try hanging more rolling stock behind them to tame their ways? Otherwise, the next step up will be two feet radius curves, I believe.

 

I am desperately trying to remember me and my brother on the front room carpet with our Hornby tinplate trains, and I am pretty sure we had the small radius curves. There were indeed lots of crashes and derailments, though, which all added to the fun . . . .

 

 

[Hroth]

4 hours ago, Lacathedrale said:

I came back from the Sussex vintage train convention with this, “for Daughter” ;)

 

I've the No 40 Tank Goods Set, with similar rails and three wagons to rattle behind the loco.

 

Those tanks are good little runners!

 

[goldfish]

According to Hornby the No.40 Tank loco needs 2' radius curves. In my experience it will run around 1' radius curves, but has difficulty pulling anything around them because of problems with the couplings.

 

There is something very odd about that front coupling, obviously somebody wasn't paying attention.

Edited July 7 by goldfish
Added comment.

[Lacathedrale]

Anyone figure out what’s wrong with this picture?

 

[34006]

No step boards is the most glaring thing,also the strapping for the W irons,and no brake gear.About par for the course with coarse scale marklin wagons of the period.

 

 

Phil

[Ben B]

 

I ended up dragging my clockwork pizza layout back out last weekend, to get some more pics for a piece for the Train Collector Society... my Hornby tender loco copes (just) with the exceedingly tight oval of Brimtoy (I think) track... tighter than Hornby A1' rails mentioned above.

 

 

 

The Bing 0-4-0's are a bit happier, having a seemingly shorter wheelbase.  The tightness of the curves somewhat indicated by the angle of the Hornby cattle van it's towing...

 

 

Couldn't resist adding this one, my favourite of the shoot :)

 

Sorry for the shameless thread hijack, though it is the work on this thread that inspired me to make the layout.  I'm hoping for a chance to build something a little bigger when I move house in a couple of months...

 

 

 

[ian]

@Ben B absolutely delightful! Those pictures brought a smile to my face.

[Nearholmer]

I splashed out a whole £3 on a secondhand book about metal toys yesterday, one of those huge photo books printed c1980, with the idea of broadening my knowledge about non-train toys, and one thing that delighted me in it were the “lead soldiers”. It doesn’t cover other lead figures, farm, town, and railway etc, but even among the soldiers the variety of poses and activities is huge, much broader than I was aware of, with complex scenes of things like field parties, casualty clearing stations etc.

 

The point? That girl by the level crossing lifts the scene, enlivens it, and like so many old toys she evokes more as a wonky blob of lead than, say, a perfect 3D scanned and printed resin figure. I can’t quite work out why, but evocation conveys more than exactitude.

 

 

Edited August 10 by Nearholmer

[John R Smith]

5 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

and like so many old toys she evokes more as a wonky blob of lead than, say, a perfect 3D scanned and printed resin figure. I can’t quite work out why, but evocation converts more than exactitude.

 

Absolutely. I find the 3D scanned figures to be very sterile and in fact slightly spooky in some way. Evocation must convey more than exactitude, otherwise we would these days have no time for Van Gogh or Rembrandt.

 

 

[ian]

9 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

The point? That girl by the level crossing lifts the scene, enlivens it, and like so many old toys she evokes more as a wonky blob of lead than, say, a perfect 3D scanned and printed resin figure. I can’t quite work out why, but evocation converts more than exactitude.

I think it is because she is to the same 'standard' as the other models, if you like an impression rather than a replica. A 3D scanned and printed figure would be obviously out of place.

[F-UnitMad]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

That girl by the level crossing lifts the scene, enlivens it, and like so many old toys she evokes more as a wonky blob of lead than, say, a perfect 3D scanned and printed resin figure. I can’t quite work out why, but evocation conveys more than exactitude.

It's called "Atmosphere", I think. 👍👍

Old tinplate trains seem to just have it in spades, somehow, despite (or because of?? 🤔🤷‍♂️ ) their inaccuracy as models.

[Ben B]

Thanks all. The figures are S&D models, metal all of them... no idea of their original vintage in terms of design, I bought them new a few years ago but I'd guess the original moulds are a few decades old. I think they blend in so well because I ended up gloss varnishing them after painting with a limited pallette of acrylics (lockdown supply issues). There is something very characterful about them, I agree, compared to 3D prints.

[F-UnitMad]

At the risk of committing Serious Thread Hijack, I have to defend 3D figures, in the context of scale models. I got these 3D colour printed figures from WestEdge 3D in Australia....

This was posed after an actual derailment during Ops on my layout a couple of weeks ago.

The scene has "oh 'bother' " written all over it...

 

Then there was an encounter with a very large, but very dead moth....

 

And in more 'realistic' terms, a crew change for my Short Line railroad.

 

As far as I'm concerned, these figures are now the most realistic items on my whole layout!!

Hijack mode /OFF....

[ian]

38 minutes ago, F-UnitMad said:

As far as I'm concerned, these figures are now the most realistic items on my whole layout!!

Hijack mode /OFF....

 But with scale equipment and suitably weathered stock they look the business.

 

On Ben B's layout they would look decidedly odd.

[Ben B]

38 minutes ago, F-UnitMad said:

At the risk of committing Serious Thread Hijack, I have to defend 3D figures, in the context of scale models. I got these 3D colour printed figures from WestEdge 3D in Australia....

This was posed after an actual derailment during Ops on my layout a couple of weeks ago.

The scene has "oh 'bother' " written all over it...

 

Then there was an encounter with a very large, but very dead moth....

 

And in more 'realistic' terms, a crew change for my Short Line railroad.

 

As far as I'm concerned, these figures are now the most realistic items on my whole layout!!

Hijack mode /OFF....

 

I agree entirely as regards a model railway, where the 3d figures add to the realism. My thinking was (budget aside) that modern figures stand out too much on the toy-train clockwork layout, just as a vintage Britains or Dinky figure would stand out like a sore thumb on a highly detailed model railway. To be honest I do need to invest in some figures to modern standards for actual railway modelling, my 1980's/1990's figures look increasingly crude...