Ahead of its time?

[Johnson Bar Jeff]

Ever since I tried EZ-track, I've veen very happy with it as a good, solid base for my "semipermanent" layout. Makes me wonder, though, why it took so long for the idea of sectional track with a roadbed to catch on?

When I was a small boy in the early 1960s, one Christmas my grandparents gave me a Gilbert/American Flyer HO set, "The North Coast Limited," a very nice Northern Pacific passenger set that came with an oval of sectional track that included a roadbed. I never really used the track; by the time I received the set, Grandpa had already built me a 4'x8' platform with a double oval of track complete with double cross-over, so I had no need for the track and it got tossed years ago.

The train set, however, I've always hung onto, and just last week I was able to acquire an oval of the Flyer track to "restore" the set somewhat. It's not bad-looking sectional track, really. The roadbed is plastic, molded in gray. The ties are part of the molded roadbed, but they're brown. The sections are held together only by the rail joiners--no clips like EZ-track.

I probably won't much use this "new/old" track any more than I used the track that came with the set originally. The set remains stored at my father's home, where the train is run every Christmas on a small platform that I build years ago with a 36"x45" loop of track.

But I still wonder whether Gilbert was ahead of its time in making this track, and why the idea of sectional track with roadbed didn't really catch on until, what, maybe 35-40 years after I got my "North Coast Limited" set?

Anybody else remember this Gilbert/Flyer HO sectional track?

[HO-Ron]

I remember the Gilbert track, but I also remember True Scale track that was made back in the 50s and 60s. You could get all the switches and around six different radius tracks along with straight track in various lengths. I was the first nickle-silver track I ever had as everyone else was making theirs in brass. It was mounted on pine road bed with a gray ballest, but only on the outside of the rails.
Ah memories.. 

HO-Ron
Modeling the Noware & Nevrwas RR. (in two locations)

[Jim Banner]

I remember Hornby Dublo trains with their 3 rail track on a tin plate base in the early 50's.  Hornby started making their Dublo trains in the late 1930's, but I am not sure if the track with the tin plate base went back that far.

Some notes on gauges and names:-

The name Dublo referred to the gauge 00 or double-O.  At one time, the gauges were standardized as 3, 2, and 1 with one gauge being the smallest that anyone could fit an electric motor in (at the time.)  Today we know gauge 1 as G-gauge.

A few years later, someone came up with a small motor and a smaller gauge of trains soon followed.  What gauge is smaller than gauge 1?  Gauge zero of course.  This, today has been corrupted into O-gauge (sounds like the "Oh" in "Oh my")

Some more progress and even smaller trains became possible.  But what is smaller than zero-gauge?  Zero-zero-gauge, of course.  Soon corrupted into OO-gauge (think "Oh oh my")  But the Americans, for some reason, had trouble with 00 being smaller than 0 and the new gauge looked like half the size of the old 0 gauge (it isn't) so they called it Half Zero Gauge, corrupted into HO gauge.

Not too much different when N-gauge came along.  While the rest of the world was calling it 000-gauge or Triple-0-gauge, the Americans called it N-gauge because it is 9 mm. between the rail heads.

The last gauge, so far, is Z-gauge.  Presumably because this was the smallest gauge that they could put a motor in back in the 1980's, this was the end of the line.  When history repeats itself, as is its habit, what will we call the next smaller gauge?

Incidentally, this version of the differences in naming H0-gauge and N-gauge is much nicer to the NMRA than the other one. 

[Johnson Bar Jeff]

Incidentally, this version of the differences in naming H0-gauge and N-gauge is much nicer to the NMRA than the other one. 

What's "the other one"?

Can it be shared on a family-friendly forum?

[Jim Banner]

The other explanation that I have heard is that the NMRA couldn't accept 00 and 000 gauge because they did not come up with those designations.  Rather like them trying to set standards for large scale, even though the G1MRA standards have been in effect worldwide for many years.

[Johnson Bar Jeff]

The other explanation that I have heard is that the NMRA couldn't accept 00 and 000 gauge because they did not come up with those designations.  Rather like them trying to set standards for large scale, even though the G1MRA standards have been in effect worldwide for many years.

Got it. Sounds a little childish, doesn't it?

So, anyway, over last weekend, I cleaned up enough of the old Gilbert track to set up a small oval, and had a go at running a locomotive on it. The old track still worked well, but it was almost immediately apparent that a roadbed track system with a method for holding the sections together in addition to the rail joiners is superior to a sytem where the sections are connected only by the rail joiners. 

[Guilford Guy]

Marklin had been making track with a metal, painted ballast base for many years, atleast since the 60's.

[ebtnut]

I would beg to differ a bit on the HO/OO thread.  Old Continental O gauge was at a scale of 7mm = 1 ft.  HO scale, at a proportion of 3.5mm = 1 ft., was "Half-O".  However, back in the '30's the available electric motors were too big to fit inside a loco, especially the smaller British stock.  The Brits addressed this by enlarging the scale to 4mm = 1 ft., and termed it OO (double-O).  However, they didn't widen the track gauge in concert with the scale, so we've had HO/OO models ever since.  We did have OO scale in the U.S.  However, the models and the track were both to scale.  The NMRA developed a set of track and wheel standards for U.S. OO.  It turned out that the OO track guage was .75".  Modelers back in the '40's and early '50's figured out that this was the same as 3 foot gauge in O scale, and we still use those OO track and wheel standards in On3 today.  Those track and wheel standards (aside from the actual track gauge) are essentially the same as HO.  U.S. double-O modeling is virtually extinct, having been overtaken by HO.  I don't believe there have been any OO suppliers since the 1960's.  BTW, Lionel made a series of U.S. OO scale models back in the '40's that were pretty nice for their day.  Collector's items now.

[Jim Banner]

ebtnut, I see you are mixing scale and gauge.  I was talking strictly about gauge.  But interesting, none the less.  Do you remember when it was that the NMRA started labeling scales with names that up to then had been applied to gauges? 0-gauge was originally 32 millimeters between the rail heads.  When introduced to North America, it became 1-1/4 inches between the rail head.  As you pointed out, there were two scales run on 0-gauge, both using it as standard gauge track.  The European scale of 7 mm/ft (1:43.54 ) was only 2% larger than true scale of  1:44,45.  But here in North America, metric was all but unknown.  So 1/4"/ft was used, even though 1:48 is almost 8% smaller than true scale.  When the NMRA started calling 0 a scale, they should logically have defined it as 1:44.45, or more correctly, as 1:44.8 seeing they also change the definition of 0 gauge at about the same time.  The fallout from naming the scales with names originally associated with gauges is still raining down on us in large scale.

The part about Lionel producing 1:76.2 cars in the 40's was also very interesting.  It explains why I have some H0-gauge cars that look oversize for H0-scale and are labelled Lionel.  I had no idea they were that old.

As an aside, you should see the list of words the new Spell Checker suggests for "ebtnut."   

[Yampa Bob]

I like the "obedient debutant"   LOL

Spell check says "Yampa" is a sweet potato. Nope, Yampa is UTE for bear.

[OkieRick]

Naw..."Yampa" is Svedish for "Grampa."   



Okie Rick

[pdlethbridge]

quote Bob "Yampa is UTE for bear"

Bear what?

[grumpy]

 Cute bear.
Don

[Johnson Bar Jeff]

quote Bob "Yampa is UTE for bear"

Bear what?

Cute bear.
Don

Awww. ... 

[ebtnut]

Jim:  I don't have all of my model RR history at my fingertips, but in general "O Gauge" came about because the tinplate manfacturers didn't want to deal in metric, and made the track gauge 1 1/4".  Back then, there wasn't much to separate "scale" modelers from "tinplaters", and in fact there was a whole set of NMRA standards developed for Hi-Rail O.  By the same token, the scale was set at a nice even 1/4" = 1 foot, which allowed folks to use a regular school ruler to do measurements.  Back in those early days, too, a number of structure models for HO were actually done at 1/8" scale for about the same reasons.  Look back at the old model magazines from the '40's and into the '50's, and most of the construction articles used standard inches and fractions for measurements (in whatever scale the model was in), since scale rules were still a rare commodity.  By the 1940's a few modelers were paying more attention to the scale/gauge issue, and you would see occasional samples of O scale models running on more scale track (sometimes referred to a Q gauge), or models built to 17/64" scale, where the old 1 1/4" track guage was kept, but the model was enlarged to match.  Ii is really only in the last 10 or 15 years that there has been serious renewed interest in "Proto" modeling, whether Proto48, Proto87, or whatever.  Were I to start over today in On3, I would opt for Proto48 standards for my standard gauge connection so that the track and wheel standards would be essentially the same.  Building dual gauge turnouts in standard O and On3 is an exercise in compromise at best.