question of scales

[Sam95]

Dear all,

I am sorry to ask you a probabily stupid question but I am little bit lost regarding scales on garden railway.

I bought a LGB starter kit to start my railway, so it seems LGB is called G scale running on 45mm track and the scale is 1:22.5

Now most of the modelers here seems to have 16mm ............... Is it 1:19 scale ? And if yes all the locos, wagon, building, ..... are bigger than mine ?

Is that correct ?

[Durley]

Yes the most popular garden railway scale for UK narrow gauge prototypes is 16mm /ft or 1:19 scale. This usually uses 32mm (O gauge) track representing 2ft gauge or 45mm (Gauge 1) track that scales to approximately 2ft 9 inch gauge. That doesn’t mean the models are necessarily larger than your G scale models as that depends on the size of the prototype being modelled.

To help visualise the difference, here’s a G gauge LGB Stainz next to a 16mm/ft Roundhouse Katie.

IMG_4920.jpeg (3.08 MiB) Viewed 44582 times

[philipy]

Just to add to what John has said, unless you are modelling a particular prototype railway, people do tend to mix up the scales somewhat and as long as the models run on whichever gauge you have chosen, folks tend to not be to fussy about the actual scale of a model, as long as it looks OK!

There is an old saying, "My railway, my rules" which roughly translates to, "If I'm happy that's all that matters and if you don't like it, you know what you can do!"

[ge_rik]

The trouble with "G Scale "is that it actually covers a range of gauge/scale combinations. 1:22.5 represents metre gauge on 45mm track. But manufacturers also produce standard gauge models running on the same track (to 1:29 or 1:32). And some of us model to 1:20.32 to represent three foot gauge (ie 15mm:1ft).

As has been said, it's entirely up to you which scale you go for. Over the years I've scatchbuilt and bashed models using a rubber ruler so my models range from 1:19 to 1:22.5 with a fair bit of variation. However, given my railway represents a mythical narrow gauge railway, I reckon I can get away with it. I've even bashed mt starter set Stainz loco and an LGB Otto to run on my railway.

IMG_2805.JPG (334.81 KiB) Viewed 44555 times

IMG_6437.JPG (343.46 KiB) Viewed 44555 times

Rik

[Sam95]

Thank you for the precisions.

The diesel locotractor I printed is bigger than my lgb rusty.
And to have a driver that fits in this diesel, I had to print a 10cm tall guy. So it is very big compared to the other people I have already printed (btw 8 and 9cm for 1:22.5 scale).

This driver will not be authorized to go done from his loco...