Gauges

Hopefully this is a simple one folks. OK Standard Gauge is 4' 8 1/2" and Broad gauge is anything larger than that. Below standard we have narrow, miniature and model railways. At which measurement does each begin & end please?
I've been told a model is too small to ride on and if you can ride on something small, that is a miniature gauge. But where is the difference between miniature and narrow gauges please?

Just for interest: The difference between a ship and a boat is what they carry. A boat carries passengers, a ship carries freight. Hmm... must try telling the Captain of the QW2 "This is a nice BOAT" and watch his reaction.

 

personally i draw the line at the smaller gauges like this. narrow gauge is preserved, miniature is anything new that can pull passengers, models are anything that can't pull a person. this means that the 21 inch princesses at MRC are miniature, but the 18 inch horwich works shunter at the NRM is narrow gauge. it gets too confusing if you use numbers too often...

 

I would suggest that minature is a model, where as narrow gauge is where the full-size track is below that of standard gauge, this does mean that you can get minature narrow gauge when people build models of the narrow gauge railways.

Baldric

 

Thanks for the replies so far. I've just seen a TV prog about the RH&DR; that was constantly referred to as miniature as it's 1/3 of the full scale.
Still seems odd to think of a South African Garrett as a narrow gauge job.

 

Another way of thinking about it is scale. A narrow gauge loco is built at 12 inches to the foot. Miniature locos are built at less than this!

 

I was told once by a submariner that there are two types of boat, ....... Submarines and Targets !!!

 

i'd imagine a similar reaction might be found if you told the captain of a submarine that he had a nice ship. probably the best definition i heard between a ship and a boat is that a ship must have at least 3 enclosed decks above the waterline. i don't buy the passengers/ freight divide. there are too many vessels which wouldn't fit. to name a few- a warship of any size, a cargo carrying barge, a sailing dinghy, a cruise liner like oasis of the seas......

 

Like the difference between pipe and tube.

 

Difficult travelling on a pipe in London, not too easy packing the tube with baccy and smoking it either.
But then a South African engine, larger than anything we had on the standard gauge in Britain, is considered narrow gauge as is little O-4-0 'Effie' down the road from me,its a strange world, but it's fascinating.
Cheers Bernard

 

No, broad/narrow and ship/boat are subjective. Pipe is ID defined whilst tube is OD defined, which is cut and dried.

 

With apologies for dragging the thread further off topic, I have some clear instructions for pipe:

 

Does 'Hollow Rod' fit in here somewhere?

 

Right i am buildint a locomotive of a non specific freelance prototype this is in 7 1/4 gauge but from what has been said that would be classed as a narrow gauge engine i will add that this is by no means of the imagination a scale model Weighs 1/2 a ton

 

Then you obviously know nothing about the 21-inch pacifics at the MRC... ...

They were built in the 1930's, and are as preserved as 6201, 4472 and the rest of them. In fact they are among the oldest diesel-hydraulics in the world, the actual oldest being the four at North Bay Railway. Don't try calling them narrow-gauge though, they are firmly miniature versions of full-size locomotives!!

The miniature vs. narrow gauge debate is not helped by the industrialisation of small gauges such as 7.25". If you don't believe me, then the Wolds Way Lavender Light Railway will open your eyes - this railway carries revenue-earning freight at a lavender farm. The Moors Valley Railway, while passenger-carrying, is firmly built and operated on narrow-gauge practise, as are many other miniature railways around the country.

The grey area is made more complicated around 15" - you had Heywood's narrow-gauge items, but today you have the pleasure railways at Cleethorpes and the like.

I wrote an article about miniature vs. narrow gauge about 12 months ago, which gained a lot of interest from the miniature railway fraternity - link here: http://s9.zetaboards.com/MRW_Forums/topic/98432/1/

Cheers,

Dom Greenop
DMR

 

In the 1960's didn't Hornby Dublo do a publicity stunt to demonstrate the magnetic adhesion on their OO scale Deltic, which involved it pulling a special sit-astride wagon with some children on it?:lol:

 

So what exactly is the O/D of the London Tube system?

 

Well its bigger than the ID or it would not comply with the published rules.:high5:

 

The Ship/Boat one is a new one on me - I was under the impression that if it could cross an Ocean it was a Ship, if it couldn't it was a Boat.

Where miniature/narrow/broad begin and end is utterly subjective, and indeed depends upon where you are.

If you are speaking nationally (rather than internationally, where 'standard' is generally accepted to be 4' 8.5"), would it be reasonable to call Irish gauge broad when it is the standard for the country? Or the Indian? Or the Russian? Likewise in countries where the main gauge is metre?

My personal and rough definition is that model is T Gauge to less than 5", miniature is 5" to 15", narrow is more than 15" to less than 4' 8.5", Standard is 4' 8.5", anything bigger is 'broad'. However, there are exceptions to this rule - I would call the 21" Princesses at Butterley miniature.

My other rough definition of miniature/narrow would be miniature is built and operated for the pleasure of the operators and/or the passengers, narrow gauge serves a purpose beyond pleasure - freight carrying, public passenger service etc. Again, there are exceptions to this! The RHDR operates, or used to operate school trains, arguably a service rather than for pleasure, but I would still call the RHDR miniature. An alternative is that a miniature railway has locomotives based on larger ones, whereas a narrow gauge one has locomotives designed specifically for the gauge used - but this is faulty as something like a 7 1/4" Tinkerbell is designed specifically for the gauge it runs on but is definitely miniature!

 

Very much depends on which line you travel on. I believe the Jubilee Line Extension between Green Park and the Canning Town portal has the largest diameter of the deep tube lines, whilst the Central line has one of the narrowest tubes (the positive rail being higher than all other tube sections). The Northern line used to have the narrowest but was expanded by digging out material around the tunnel rings and inserting straight pieces in four places equidistant around the circumference.

Regards,

Dan

 

Personally, I would still consider these both miniature. The WWLLR (I presume) was built because the owners of the farm thought that it would be an added attraction/were into trains themselves, not because it was the most obvious/cost effective transport solution. Likewise the MVR - whilst 'properly' operated it is still a miniature railway originally built purely for pleasure.