h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Your statement that the smaller scales are powered by Electricity only is no entirely true as I have seen live steam OO and OO-9 both working very well.

GARTHION OF URAN

What You On About
Regars The Twig

Model railways are an ever evolving hobby. The practical uses of live steam are forever decreasing in size (Does'nt make sense i know) but we can now experience the effects of a rweal locomotive in miniature on OO gauge model railways and breath deeply of the steam to remind us of the smell of real steam.
That is what I mean

OK, sorry, I'm only eleven and THEY deleted my login, so here I am to answer any questions.

OK, sorry, I'm only eleven and THEY deleted my login, so here I am to answer any questions.

Wow.....

...exhaustive and informative article. Well done that man.

what impresses me about a really good model railway layout is how it condenses an awful lot of mileage into a relatively small space.

When you think about it, 1:72 scale (not that far out from the railway buff's HO:00)effectively means that by happy maths, a feature one mile long in real life would have to be 72 feet long on a model railway layout for it to be in true scale. (ie, Stockport railway viaduct, spanning the River Mersey, is slightly less than one mile long, so you'd need a VERY big spare room for this one feature alone, if you wanted it in true scale!)

I'd guess not many model rail buffs have spare rooms eighty feet long, to enable their stations to be at least one scale mile apart!

So somehow the illusion has to be given that the stations and halts on the model railway are seperated by miles, as they would be in real life.

If you stop and work it out in your head, the illusion temporarily collapses when you realise the "stations" on the average layout are at most three hundred scale yards apart - ie, comfortable walking distance for those little figures posed as waiting on the platform!

What impresses is how model rail experts can effortlessly do this, convey this impression and optical illusion of an awful lot of space packed into a tiny area. It never fails to impress!

"As far as I am aware, very few 00 scale models of any non-British trains have been produced, in fact the only such models of which I am aware were from the Kitmaster range, which has long been out of production, and the scarcity of these "foreign" models compared to the rarity of most Kitmaster kits means that they will be like hens' teeth!"

As a modeller in a related area (WW2 military vehicles) can I point you towards Revell Models of Germany, who have recently brought out an interesting-looking range of German railway locomotives of the wartime period? Thyese appear to be in a compatible scale to tank, vehicle and figure sets of the period (generally 1:72 or 1:76) and might be worthy of closer examination - there appear to be at least four types of German loco available in kit form covering the period late 1920's to late 1950's, with the emphasis appearing to be on WW2. (I guess German railways had a lot of ground to cover in 1942, even if their British timetables had to be scrapped...)

Hi there one and all
As to the last posting about British out line in 00 gauge I think that if you look over the pond to the USA you will find many Out line Locomotives that are not british Made in both the USA and Japan

Not sure if I understood that, but if so, then...

Yes... but in the USA and Japan (and indeed, most of the rest of the world), 00 gauge models are not really produced, instead being to H0 (approx. 3.5 mm:ft) instead of 00 (4mm:ft)

Cheers,
Skinnylinny