N guage

[Sasquatch12]

Are there 2 sizes in N Guage? Several years ago I purchased what I thought was an N guage engine model of the Jupiter. I was cleaning out my folks house and I found it but it was in bad shape , broken etc...  I wanted to replace it so I found 1 on Ebay in the original box. I bought it however its smaller than the one I had. The box says N guage but it's much smaller. Are there different sizes within a guage? I'd like to find a replacement for mine.

[dutchbuilder]

I believe there are even three.
Japanese N = 1:50.
British = 1:148.
And the rest of the world 1:160.
Is there more?

Ton

[Terry Toenges]

Are they both Bachmann?

[the Bach-man]

Dear All,
Bachmann N Scale is 1:160 proportion.
Have fun!
the Bach-man

[Trainman203]

What brand was the original engine? Bachmann?  Or something else?   And are "gauge" and "scale" getting confused?  Does the new "smaller" one operate on the same width ("gauge") track as the older "bigger" one?  Side by side photos of them together would be very helpful ..... one from above to see if they are both the same "scale," and one from underneath to compare track width ("gauge").

Sometimes older models were over oversized to accommodate motors and drives.  Maybe that is what is going on here.

[Maletrain]

There is a lot of track with 9mm gauge available all over the world. 

The United States has a real railroad standard track gauge of 56.5", so models of U.S. railroad equipment are built to 1/160 of the real size to run on the 9mm track, which is "N gauge" (for Nine millimeter) gauge, and it is called "N Scale."

Some other countries have different track gauges for their real railroads.  So, to use the same 9 mm track, they end-up using slightly different scales, but still call it "N scale."

That might make a slight difference in the size of your old model compared to your new model.

There is another possibility.  The model might be really made of a narrow gauge locomotive, which might be something like a real 42" or even 36" track, with the model designed to run on the same 9mm "N gauge" track.  That would make a very large difference in the actual model size, and most of us would not call that "N scale".  But, who knows what some toy maker decided to call something a long time ago.