Railway modelling (UK, Australia, Ireland and Canada) or Model railroading (US) is a hobby in which rail transport systems are modelled at a reduced scale, or ratio. The scale models include locomotives, rolling stock, streetcars, tracks, signalling, and roads, buildings, vehicles, model figures, lights, and features such as streams, hills and canyons.
The earliest model railways are the 'carpet railways' in the 1840s. Electric trains appeared around the turn of the 20th century. But these were crude likenesses. Model trains today are more realistic. Today modellers create model railway / railroad layouts, often recreating real locations and periods in history.
General description
Involvement ranges from possession of a train set to spending hours and large sums on a large and exacting model of a railroad and the scenery through which it passes, called a "layout". Hobbyists, called "model railroaders" or "railway modellers", may maintain models large enough to ride ( see Live steam, Ridable miniature railway and Backyard railroad ). Modellers may collect model trains, building a landscape for the trains to pass through, or operate their own railroad in miniature.
Some older scale models reach high prices.Layouts vary from a circle or oval of track to the realistic, real places are modelled to scale. One of the largest is in the Pendon Museum in Oxfordshire, UK, where an EM gauge (same 1:76.2 scale as 00 but with more accurate track gauge) model of the Vale of White Horse in the 1930s is under construction. The museum also houses one of the earliest scenic models - the Madder Valley layout built by John Ahern. This was built in the late 1930s to late 1950s and brought in realistic modelling, receiving coverage on both sides of the Atlantic in the magazines Model Railway News and Model Railroader . Bekonscot in Buckinghamshire is the oldest model village and includes a model railway, dating from the 1930s. The world's largest model railroad in H0 scale is the Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, Germany. The largest live steam layout, with 25 miles (40 km) of track is Train Mountain in Chiloquin, Oregon, U.S..
Model railroad clubs exist where enthusiasts meet. Clubs display models for the public. One specialist branch concentrates on larger scales and gauges, commonly using track gauges from 3.5 to 7.5 inches. Models in these scales are usually hand-built and powered by live steam, or diesel-hydraulic, and the engines are often powerful enough to haul dozens of human passengers. Often railways of this size are called miniature railways. List of model railroad clubs.
The Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) at MIT in the 1950s pioneered automatic control of track-switching by using telephone relays.
The oldest society is The Model Railway Club (established 1910), near Kings Cross, London, UK. As well as building model railways, it has 5,000 books and periodicals. Similarly, The Historical Model Railway Society at Butterley, near Ripley, Derbyshire specialises in historical matters and has archives available to members and non-members.
Scales and gauges
Main articles: Rail transport modelling scales and Rail transport modelling standardsThe size of engines depends on the scale and can vary from 700 mm (28") tall for the largest ridable live steam scales such as 1:8, down to matchbox size for the smallest in Z-scale (1:220). However, there is another scale that was introduced in 2007 that is also commercially available. Called T Gauge, it is 3mm gauge track and is a scale of 1:450, basically half the size of Z scale. A typical H0 (1:87) engine is 50 mm (2") tall, and 100 mm to 300 mm (4" to 12") long. The most popular scales are: G scale, Gauge 1, O scale, S scale, H0 scale (in Britain, the similar 00), TT scale, and N scale (1:160 in the United States, but 1:144 in the UK). There is growing interest in Z scale and T Gauge. H0 is the most popular. Popular narrow-gauge scales include Sn3, HOn3 Scale and Nn3, which are the same in scale as S, H0 and N except with a narrower spacing between the tracks (in these examples, a scale three feet instead of the 4'8.5" standard gauge).
The largest common scale is 1:8, with 1:4 sometimes used for park rides. G scale (Garden, 1:24 scale) is most popular for backyard modelling. It is easier to fit a G scale model into a garden and keep scenery proportional to the trains. Gauge 1 and Gauge 3 are also popular for gardens. 0, S, H0, and N scale are more often used indoors. Lionel trains in 0 scale (1:48 scale) are popular toys. S refers to 1:64 scale.
The words scale and gauge seem at first interchangeable but their meanings are different. Scale is the model's measurement as a proportion to the original, while gauge is the measurement between the rails.
At first, model railways were not to scale. Manufacturers and hobbyists soon arrived at de facto standards for interchangeability, such as gauge, but trains were only a rough approximation to the real thing. See Normen Europäischer Modelleisenbahnen (NEM) and NMRA. Official scales for the gauges were drawn up but not at first rigidly followed and not necessarily correctly proportioned for the gauge chosen. O (zero) gauge trains, for instance, operate on track too widely spaced in the United States as the scale is accepted as 1:48 whereas in Britain 0 gauge uses a ratio of 43.5:1 or 7 mm/1 foot and the gauge is near to correct. British 00 standards operate on track significantly too narrow. The 4 mm/1 foot scale on a 16.5 mm gauge corresponds to a track gauge of 4ft 1 1/2in, 7 inches undersized). 16.5 mm gauge corresponds to 4ft 8.5 standard gauge in H0 (half zero) 3.5 mm/1 foot or 1:87. Most commercial scales have standards that include wheel flanges that are too deep, wheel treads that are too wide, and rail tracks that are too large.
Later, modellers became dissatisfied with inaccuracies and developed standards in which everything is correctly scaled. These are used by modellers but have not spread to mass-production because the inaccuracies and overscale properties of the commercial scales ensure reliable operation and allow for shortcuts necessary for cost control. The finescale standards include the UK's P4, and the even finer S4, which uses track dimensions scaled from the prototype. This 4 mm:1ft modelling uses wheels 2 mm or less wide running on track with a gauge of 18.83 mm. Check-rail and wing-rail clearances are similarly accurate.
A compromise of P4 and 00 is 'EM' which uses a gauge of 18.2 mm with more generous tolerances than P4 for check clearances. It gives a better appearance than 00 though pointwork is not as close to reality as P4. It suits many where time and improved appearance are important.
Couplers and connectors
In addition to different scales, there are also different types of couplers for connecting cars, which are not compatible with each other. Horn-hook (known in the UK as 'tension lock') and Kadee(knuckle) are two of the more widely used couplers.
Landscaping
Some modellers pay attention to landscaping their layout, creating a fantasy world or modelling an actual location, often historic. Landscaping is termed "scenery building" or "scenicking".
Constructing scenery involves preparing a sub-terrain using a wide variety of building materials, including (but not limited to) screen wire, a lattice of cardboard strips, or carved stacks of expanded polystyrene (styrofoam) sheets. A scenery base is applied over the sub-terrain; typical base include casting plaster, plaster of Paris, hybrid paper-pulp (papier-mâché) or a lightweight foam/fiberglass/bubblewrap composite as in Geodesic Foam Scenery. The scenery base is covered with ground cover, which may be ground foam, colored sawdust, natural lichen, or commercial scatter materials for grass and shrubbery. Buildings and structures can be purchased as kits, or built from cardboard, balsa wood, basswood, paper, or polystyrene or other plastic. Trees can be fabricated from materials such as Western sagebrush, candytuft, and caspia, to which adhesive and model foliage are applied; or they can be bought ready-made from specialist maunfacturers. Water can be simulated using polyester casting resin, polyurethane, or rippled glass. Rocks can be cast in plaster or in plastic with a foam backing. Castings can be painted with sta
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