From: urf@icl.se (Urban F)
Subject: A short history of early model railroading
Organization: None. On USENET I speak only for myself.
X-Alt.reply-Address: n.g.u.fredriksson.swe2001@oasis.icl.co.uk
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 13:48:38 GMT


1825    Josef Ritter von Baader builds a model in the park of the
        Nymphenberg castle to interest the king of Bayern in a
        real railroad project. (But he liked the Main-Donau canal
        better.)

        Promotional models are not uncommon in the following
        decades.

1835    The railway between Nurnberg and Furth is opened, and toy
        makers in the area make solid castings of the steam
        wagons.

        These are followed by tin plate, wood and cardboard
        models in the decades to come.

1862    Josehp, Myers & Co of London becomes the first company to
        have a steam powered model locomotive in their catalog.
        Carogatti in Konigsberg becomes the first German company
        to do so in 1869.

        The models of this time always ran on the floor, most
        were fueled by ethanol. Smallest gauge was 63 mm, but up
        to 115 mm wasn't uncommon.

1881    Bing starts making flywheel and steam powered models.

1882    Planck shows an electical train model, but this was a
        little before the technology was mature.

1885    First clockwork toys made by S Guntermann of Nurnberg.
        All other makers soon follow.

1891    On the Leipzig exhibition, Marklin are the first to have
        a track system for their clockwork trains.

        They ran with fixed speed, but could be stopped with
        devices between the rails that acted on levers on the
        locomotive.
        The track system had straight and curved sections as well
        as switches. The sections had two rail joiners at one
        end, none at the other, adapters with joiners at both
        ends, or no joiners also existed.

        Gauges were standardized:       0       1       2       3
                                        35 mm   48 mm   54 mm   75 mm
        but as at that time the gauge was measured from the
        center of the rails, and they were 3 mm wide, subtract 3
        mm to get the modern equivalents.
        Level of detailing was abysmal. In gauge 0 and 1 the cars
        didn't even have doors hinted at.

        Caretti invents a system with one rail joiner at each
        end.

        All Nurnberg companies adapt the gauges 0, 1 and 2. In
        USA Ives uses 0 and 1. However lots of companies had
        gauges between 2 and 3: Bing's gauge 3 was 67 mm and 4
        was 75 mm; Shonner's 67 mm was called IIa; Planck had a
        65 mm gauge they called 8.

1898    Shonner becomes the first European company to have an
        electric streetcar model, companies in USA had been doing
        so for some time before European compaies caught up.

        Three different systems are already in existance: 2-rail,
        center rail or catenary.

        Marklin started just before 1900 with electric
        streetcars, which soon appear in steam engine form.

1902    Shonner announces a gauge 000 with a 25 mm gauge. This
        makes us believe that there had been something called 00
        by then, perhaps Bing's 28 mm track. All of the early
        small gauges became failures, as they were considered too
        toylike.

1904    The first electric trains in the small gauges 1 and 0
        appear, but the motors are still oversize.

        Most equipment run on 50-60 V DC. As controllers were
        mostly used simple resistors directly connected to the
        house current of 110 or 220 V. Not very safe.

        There was already since a number of year an English
        magazine _Model Engineer_ for hobbyists who built their
        own scale models, and when the Englishman Basset-Lowke
        starts collaborating with the German company Bing, which
        gets to make models of English prototypes, the
        transformation of the toy trans into a hobby for adults
        is started.

        1:16 with 89 mm gauge was common among the English
        hobbyists, but that was a little too large to become
        practical. The Basset-Lowke models were made to standard
        gauges, but not to any scale. The English thought
        measuring from the center of the rails was stupid, they
        wanted to measure like the prototype, and the trains kept
        to a scale corresponding to that.

        As the English were influencial,
        gauges were standardized:       0       1       2       3
                                        32 mm   45 mm   51 mm   64 mm
                                        1:43,5  1:30    1:27    1:23

1914-18 The war meant the destruction of most of the German
        industry. For the surving companies it took about a
        decade to regain what they had lost.

        In England, gauge 0 to 1:43,5 became common, through the
        makers Basset-Lowke, LMC (Leeds Model Company) and Hornby
        (Meccano), with input from the model railroad clubs.

        In USA, makers Lionel, Ives and American Flyer mainly
        made 0 gauge models. Gauge 1 and 2 were kept to the
        German standard.

1923    Basset-Lowke, together with his designer Greenly,
        introduces what he considers the first table top layout
        trains. The gauge is 00, 16.5 mm track to the scale 1:76.
        As it now had become practical to build stamped metal
        track with roadbed, ties and rails combined, with the
        centre rail isolated, Bing gets large orders for it from
        England. But both in Germany and USA the new gauge was
        largely ignored by the manufacturers.

        In USA, the gauge 00 gets a track gauge of 19 mm to fit
        the scale 1:76.

1935    NMRA is founded in USA, and decides that gauge 0 is to be
        to the scale 1:48. American manufacturers agree that H0
        is 16.5 mm track and a scale of 1:87.

        Basset-Lowke adjusts the scale to the track gauge and it
        becomes 1:87.

        Trix-Werke in Germany (who was a competitor to Meccano),
        starts making 16.5 mm track on a roadbed of pressed
        cardboard, so that all three rails could be isolated from
        each other, thus permitting two trains to operate
        independently on the same track. They ran on 14 V AC, and
        direction was changed with a pulse of higher voltage.
        They used a scale of 1:90.

1936    Marklin introduces trains on 16.5 mm track with the
        centre rail isolated, scale beeing 1:85. The motors had
        two windings and were run on rectified AC. Depending on
        what polarity was chosen at the controller, rectifieres
        in the locomotive activated either of the two windings,
        thus controlling direction of travel. This didn't work
        too well, so Marklin adopted the Trix system.
        Marklin does not call this scale H0 until after the
        1939-45 war.

1938    American flyer introduces a 1:64 scale, but keep the same
        track gauge as 0. In the 1940's, it becomes gauge S, but
        then with a gauge of 22 mm.

Some German names in this article really have umlauts: Nurnberg,
Nuernberg; Shonner, Shoenner; Marklin, Maerklin; Furth, Fuerth;
Guntermann, Guentermann.

I claim no copyright to this article, anyone can use it freely.

--
 Urban Fredriksson  urf@icl.se  
Newsgroups: rec.models.railroad