| Z scale is the newest and smallestsize with a proportion of 1:220. A lim-ited line of well-made European-styletrains is offered by M~/rklin, the in-novator of this size. Very little creativemodeling (making things at home) hasyet been done in this size. N scale is the next larger size. It iscurrently the second most popular scale,used by approximately 14 per cent of themodelers in the United States. A goodvariety of not only American-prototypeequipment, but also Japanese andEuropean equipment, is available frommany makers. Not much home buildingof rolling stock is done, but structuresare often modeled creatively from kitsor from scratch--that is, modeled fromnon-commercial parts and raw mate-rials. The ratio is 1:160. Next larger is TT scale, 1:120, witha very limited line of supplies availa-ble mostly by mail. This is a size for cre-ative modeling only, since you mustbuild nearly everything you tacklefrom scratch. HO scale (pronounced ~'H" followedby "oh"), 1:87, is the most popular size.About three fourths of the modelers inthe United States do most of their mod-eling in HO. HO scale has the widestlines of parts, kits, rolling stock, etc.-in fact, so much that no hobby shop canpossibly stock all that is made. S scale, 1:64. This is mostly a crea-tive modeler's scale. Some brass locomo-tives are imported in this scale, particu- larly for narrow-gauge models running on track a little narrower than HO.Normal S gauge track is wider than HO.Very few hobby shops stock S scalematerials. Next larger is O scale (commonlycalled 1~,, scale), with a ratio of 1:48. Mostoften it is used on O gauge track, 1.250"between railheads. This size is cur-rently used by about 7 per cent of themodel railroaders in this country. Somegood lines of parts and kits are offered aswell as some brass locomotives and agood selection of ready-to-run plasticfreight cars and locomotives. Few hobbyshops handle this size, but it pays to ask. Later you will find that there is awhole family of models of about 1/4" scalesize but in a choice of three slightly dif-ferent scales and three slightly differenttrack gauges. We have quoted onlyNorth American common practice. Thesame track gauge is used for the largertoy trains made by Lionel, Marx, andothers. If you have a bent for figures, you willnotice that each size quoted has beenabout 11/2 times the size of the one men-tioned before, and every second size isalmost doubled. This near-perfect geo-metric progression was not planned. Itis the result of evolution. A lot of otherin-between sizes were tried, but theywere too close together to survive. The next larger size, 1:32, is all butobsolete. It was %"-to-the-foot scale andit ran on '~No. 1" gauge track, or 1.772"between railheads. Now collectors huntfor such models. They were more com-mon in Europe than here. But this same No. 1 gauge track isused for G scale models, 1:22.5. Theseare models of narrow-gauge trains,made by Lehmann of Germany. Theyare made of extremely sturdy plasticand metal so they can be used outdoorsas well as indoors. Since the models areof narrow-gauge equipment, they arelarger than standard-gauge modelsrunning on the same-gauge track. Thisfollows because the scale has to belarger to fit narrow-gauge wheels to thetrack. How do you make a scale mea-surement? Simply figure the full-sizedimension in inches or millimeters;then divide by the model ratio. That'sall there is to it. Example: 6'-8" is a typi-cal door height for a house. This is 80".To determine the HO scale height~ di-Top to bottom, the three most popular sizesof model trains are: O, HO, and N. |
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