Monday 28 February 2011

Gauge Fudging

Last week I was down in the Devon and Cornwall photographing layouts for the UK's most innovative model railway magazine Model Rail (it also has the best repro by far too).

The shot here is of my freshly weathered up Bachmann SDJR 7F 2-8-0 posed on John Farmer's delightful depiction of a modern day railway outpost near Exeter in P4. Before getting down to taking the 'proper' photos, we thought it a bit of fun to back date the layout 50 or so years and pose this OO gauge loco in it. Serious toy chuff chuff fans know that OO which is 16.5mm gauge will not work on P4 which is something around 18.8333333333333333333 mm in gauge. However if one is sneaky, all one needs to do is to place a length of rail on its side just inside the rail furthest away for the far loco wheel flanges to rest on (if you look under the front of the loco just to the right of the pony truck you can just seen the rail). The 2 wagons in tow are proper P4 gauge however.

It would be unfair to take credit for such tomfoolery, Messrs A York and P Marshall-Potter have done this many times in the past, but they have kept the 'how' bit a secret.

2 comments:

  1. Once upon a time I modelled in EM and had a 00 gauge loco for sale. Popped it on the EM track for an Ebay photo and sold it without a question. (loco was advertised as 00). With the high detail of RTR 00 stock differences between the gauges are less noticeable. It's really only the head on view that shows the superiority of EM and P4 over 00 gauge track, in my view.

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  2. You have defiled a heavenly P4 layout and will go to toy train hell Mr Nev.

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