My friend was leafing through some Model Railroader magazines from 1966, and it mentioned Q scale in the September 1966 issue on page 56. Is anybody familiar with it?
1/45 as opposed to 1/48 so that the track gauge is right - O gauge track scales out to 5' in 1/48. Make the trains a little bigger, and the track gauge is right.
It was also used the opposite way, at least by Minton Cronkhite, which was 1/48 proportion trains using track the proper scale width - narrower than standard O scale track.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
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When O scale was first used, it came from England where it was 7mm to the foot which used a track gauge of 1.25 inches. The scale was change in the U.S. to 1/4" to the foot or 1:48, but the track gauge was not changed.
1.25 inches is a gauge of 5 feet in O scale (1:48)
Historically, 2 attempts were made to correct this. One was to use a scale of 17/64, the other was to use a track gauge of 1.177". Neither was successful. There is confusion over which is Q. Usually 17/64 is also known as Q, but I have seen the track gauge of 1.177 called Q as well. (Searching the 'net will find examples of both)
Currently O scale uses 1.25. Proto:48 uses 1.177", but it is also about using exact scale wheels, proper guard rail spacing, etc. as well as track gauge.
Enjoy
Paul
There was a controversy over MR's use of it on drawings in that time period. I liked Linn Westcott, who was editor at that time, but I'm pretty sure that designation was his idea. The German toy train manufacturers. particularly Marklin, set the standards for track gauges in the early years, and when people started getting serious about model railroading, as opposed to running ready-built toy trains (although, plenty of them built good model railroads and ran trains in a serious way, far into the '50s), they figured O gauge meant 1/45 ratio of 7mm=1' in England, where we got our goofy measuring system.
BTW, 0-gauge ("Zero Gauge") was the smallest, considered a bantam scale then, and the trains were scaled up from there: 1, 2, and 3. In printing, a zero (0) looked skinnier than an O, so when they started developing 3.5mm trains, half or zero-scale's 7mm, they designated it "Half-Zero," but H0 looks funny in print, so they started printing it as HO. We Yanks, not used to the Metric system, even though it's widely used in most of the rest of the world (I think the Brits use it a lot since the '60s-'70s, the same as our scientific community and Space Age industries). worked it out to 17/64"=1'. Of course, the majority ended up using 1/4"=1', but used the same track gauge---oversized.
Then an SIG started laying track to the correct gauge for quarter-inch scale, calling it Q-scale, and Linn decided to run with it. Eventually, the designation became Fine Scale. The Fine Scale advocates even narrowed the wheel tread and turned flanges as close to prototype as possible, narrowing the trucks to suit. The NMRA RP25 flanges work just fine, even on the Code 100 rails some of us use, and a lot of us don't want to mess with using the true track gauge for quarter-inch modeling, but it does have challenges, especially when building locomotives of the Steam Age.
I hope your friend doesn't get hung up on the track gauge in MR's "Q scale" drawings!
Deano
Never heard of it. Sounds like some escoterica from the ghosts of model RR past!
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
I think the "Q" designation goes back quite a ways. Seems to me Minton Cronkhite used 17/64" on his custom layouts (like Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry), and I'm pretty sure I've seen contemporary sources (1930's books and magazines) calling it "Q scale".
BTW that is the "correct" scale for O gauge, working out to 1:45. In Europe where they use the metric scale more, they use 7mm = 1 foot, which works out to 1:43.55. That's why so many "O scale" automobiles are 1:43 scale, because they're made in Europe. If you take 1:43.55 and divide it in half, you get 1:87.1, "Half O" HO scale. Of course in the US we knew nothing about the metric system 100 years ago, and use 1/4" = 1 foot, or 1:48 scale.
Thanks for solving the riddle fellas!
I thought Q was for 1/4" scale, and that 17/64" scale was O17.
Dan