David (hojack) had replied to this thread with what I thought was a great reply. Now I see it has been deleted. Not sure if David did that himself. I found his reply in my email.
To your point Gary, David discussed the Cascade, which he said was modeled to 1:32 scale. The maker intentionally reduced the scale to make it operational, since it would have been enormous at 1:26 scale. So, there are definitely some modern era standard gauge trains that are much more to scale, but the scale they model to is not standard. Also, the scale is not always proportionate to the track width, which means the trains may be to scale from a side profile view, but not to scale from a front or rear view.
My point was more that there is not a consistent scale used in standard gauge even in the modern era. However, it would be possible to find modern era engines, cars and figures that match the same scale (pick one 1:32, 1:26, 1:24). The problem in building a scale layout is then finding buildings and accessories that are to scale. These would likely need to be scratch-built.
George
