but the French use 1.43.5, as do the British, so no use blaming Europeans then for 1/4'' scale
Ah, but I didn't say the French did it right; but merely that the metric system would have empowered the U.S. to do it better. And you Brits get a lot of the blame for adopting the Roman standard of the width of a horse's a**.
from the Wik "The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever"
During the presidency of George Washington, he should have ordered that the width of all future main transportation ways shall be a minimum of 2 meters. He would have made the ride on coaches more comfortable and model railroading easier and less contentious by miles.
And don't get me started on the mess that the British standard has caused in the aerospace industry, although it probably led to the employment of thousands of additional engineers and checkers. Even at that, we missed Mars because someone failed to check the conversion from miles to kilometers.
I will say that being brought up on British has probably made it easier to count by twos which has more relevance when moving from the abacus to the chip. Now up to RFC3548 (base 16, 32, 64) rather than the hexadecimal of yesteryear.
Anyway, I'll take my O scale at 30mm, no exceptions, and that's by executive order. The next CEO can do as she wishes.
