Ready to Run OO9/H09

[b308]

I not sure many HO modellers would, except perhaps as a novelty... The problem is that HOe are models of 760mm gauge (2' 6") gauge prototypes and are quite large, hence an HOe loco looks at home in 009 as it's a big loco in real life and making it to a smaller scale reduces the size to one acceptable in 009, if the prototype was place alongside many British 2' gauge locos it would dwarf it... Trouble is it doesn't work well the other way... The 600mm locos weren't that big and whilst some may accept them I doubt many would... 600mm (2') gauge already has it's own scale in Europe, HOf, running on Z scale track, 6.5mm and, even if converted to 6.5mm it would look far too big...

I was thinking of the 2-6-2T Hunslets (Russell/SLR85) rather than the Quarry ones as they got around all over the world... The scale of OO is the main issue, though, as it's a British scale and most others use HO...

[Bufferstop]

The 00/H0 divide says so interesting things about the arrogance of early 20th Century Britain, not the usual "ours is the real way" attitude but the assumption that nothing would be done better. A lot of early H0 stuff was forced to take liberties with dimensions below footplate level. modellers should have held onto the 3.5mm ideal, as some of the best were managing to produce acceptable H0 models. It was the toy makers who initially forced through 4mm. If we had stuck with 3.5 and accepted for the time being that some bits were going to be out of proportion improvements in mechanisms would have allowed a gradual re integration of UK models into the international scene. The ratio choice that puzzles me is that of Continental TT why on earth did people who thought and worked in metric units not come up with the most metric of Ratios 1:100.
Ah well back to the topic, just remind me what it was. Ah RTR 009/H09.

[b308]

Entirely agree, Bufferstop! I think TT 1:120 was chosen to make it proportionally smaller than HO, compare 3.5mm and 3mm models and it's not really worth it... If you look at the scales (Continental versions) of O, HO, TT and N - 1:45, 87, 120, 160, they all dovetail very nicely... Another one of those "missed opportunities", 1:120 is a superb scale to model in, you can get far more in and the sharp curves don't look quite as bad as the British TT scale of 3mm/ft... I suppose the same could be said of 4mm, 3mm and 2mm, but the problem comes in that they are all Narrow Gauge scale/gauge combinations!!