Never Satisfied

[Western Fan]

 I have been fascinated my model trains for well over 50 years. The increase in the realism of mass produced models in that time is astonishing. We now expect brake blocks to be in line with the wheels. Buffers are the correct hight. Realistic weathering is readily available. Steam locomotives have brake gear and piping and all the driving wheels touch the rails. Passenger coaches are the correct length and are not restricted to brake thirds and composites (Hornby Dublo coaches came in several varieties but were not scale models of any prototype). Windows are glazed and the glazing is flush. Cam systems mean that coaches can couple closely but still get round train set curves.

So what do I find to moan about?

There are still two areas that need improvement. Firstly, couplings are still too big and keep vehicles too far apart. Secondly, the gap between steam locomotives and their tenders is far too large.

I understand why these problems are so difficult to address but there are some clever people out there.

Does anyone have any ideas what to do? What features of contemporary models frustrates you?

[walkingthedog]

I'm not too worried about the couplings, at least they have more or less standardised them. The N gauge couplings although more realistic are absolutely huge and look really odd. 

 

Tender/loco distance is a real problem because of the scale curves a majority of us have to use. Distance between wagons is even worse. 

I have on several occasions shortened the draw bar to make the tender as close as possible to still be able to use it. Some locos have adjustable draw bars. 

[The son of Triangman]

Also to consider is that OO scale isn''t an accurate scale as such as the mass produced track system lets it down so having the nth detail on locos doesn't really matter as they are running on "narrow.gauge" track

[walkingthedog]

True SoT but that is only evident when you see it alongside the correct track. 

[The son of Triangman]

I agree WTD. Scale 18.83 mm track with scale locos really shows up the difference.

[LCDR]

  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  Fine scale is all well and good, but requires a great deal more space than OO, because the layout has to use curves much closer to reality, which are much greater radii than toy train tracks.  A good model railway creates an illusion and need not be finely detailed or accurate to scale in order to please the builder or the observer. I have seen some very entertaining layouts which are far from scale, but run reliably, have plenty to look at and are operated by people who are enjoying themselves.

 

I took an ACE trains Battle of Britain 3 rail coarse scale tinplate (ish) locomotive to an O gauge Guild meeting last month. Half expecting to be laughed out of the hall, I was pleasantly surprised at the genuine interest shown, made all the more satisfying because we were deep in the heart of North Eastern territory.

The ACE BoB will just about negotiate 2 feet radius curves which isn't too bad in 7mm scale but it does prefer 3 feet or greater. In equivalent OO terms this is just about First Radius!

[Cronan]

I agree with WTD about couplings and track width. There are certain limits of how realistic you want it for a reasonable price and also practicallity say for instance if the flanges and wheel width  are to scale the model loco would probaly derail a lot. Just my thoughts.

[LCDR]

 Just so! When Protofour (P4) was being introduced as a more precise version of EM (Eighteen Millimeters) way back in the 1960s there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth because the wagons and locos kept derailing.  Real railway track is laid in with a tollerance (in theory at least) of 1/8 inch. People working at 1/76th of this didn't have a snowballs chance of getting it as accurate as this. So they did what the real railways did, and introduced fully working suspension. That sort of helped to keep the trains on the track most of the time, but not always.

I recall an exhibition that we took our club layout to in the early 1980s. The organisers placed us back to back with a P4 shunting layout. We were merrily cruising round with Hornby, Lima, Mainline and Airfix rolling stock on Streamline code 100 track, and apart from one small incident where a sudden rise in temperature caused some of our track section gaps to close up and short out the layout, our trains ran with no finger poking or the appearance of the four finger and a thumb breakdown crane. However the poor souls on the P4 shunting layout were having to manually intervene to restart and re-rail every few minutes.

[The son of Triangman]

Just saying folks, perhaps we shouldn't worry over every detail on a model when 00 track and our models are a compromise