The Varying Sizes of Model Railways
The quality of today’s model railway parts has to be seen to be believed. Whether it’s a model of an old Canadian Pacific steam locomotive, or a diesel electric shunting engine, the amount of intricate detail that is faithfully represented in the models of today is absolutely awesome to behold. Of course there are many sizes of model railways and these are normally defined by “scale”. Sometimes people refer to “gauge”, but gauge refers to the size of the actual railway tracks, while scale refers to the scale or relative size of the models themselves.
Take for example trains o scale where the scale is 1:87, which means an 87 foot building in the real world would be 1 foot on the model.
The largest gauge is 1:8, with 1:4 often being used typically for park rides. G scale relates to garden scale (1:24) and is very popular with enthusiasts who build layouts in their gardens or backyards.