High Rail Narrow Gauge?

That was somewhat the idea when the Flyer old time Franklin sets were designed, although they were never marketed as O narrow gauge.

Rusty

We use Bachman On30 for NG on our family layout--in fact, the NG line is my wife's.  The advantage is that it's already O scale, but it's actually smaller than S, so the distinction is more readily apparent than that between, say, taditional 027 and AF S.

I was having similar ideas when I saw the RMT speeder, which looks like G scale running on O track. Even the MTH Galloping Goose seems oversized for O scale track at first glance, the K Line Porter too. All their proportions seem to make O gauge 3 rail appear narrow-gauge.

The Porter was available in S, so does that make S scale track around 2-foot narrow gauge?

The Porter was never made in S.  Good thing, too.  Changing track gauge does not change scale.  Being oversized for O, it would have been a monster in S.

The MTH Galloping Goose, K-Line Porter and 2-truck Shay were all built to a scale greater than 1/4" to the foot. 

Somehow, K-Line managed to get the Plymouth switcher right for O scale.

Rusty

The MTH Goose would make a GREAT 1/32 scale model using the 'G' gauge trains as standard gauge and the MTH Goose as narrow. Talk about a mix of scales!!

AYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY !

Actually "S" gauge track, which is .883" between the rails, would be about 3' 6" in gauge in "0" scale, 1/4" = 1'.  "0" gauge track is actually 1 1/4" between the rails or a scale 5'.  Actually incorrect for our trains.  But, what many of our fans use for narrow gauge track is HO, which in "0" scale is actually about 30" between rails.  American narrow gauge has long been somewhat standardized on 36" between the rails, so actually both HO and S are incorrect for accurate 3' narrow gauge models.

I think that the "S" sized track would have been a better choice for so called "Hi Rail" narrow gauge because this track is a bit easier and more forgiving for operations than HO is.  And, since our regular "0" gauge is already a scale 4" too wide, to have our narrow gauge trains running next to our standard gauge, the slightly too wide "S" track would have looked more correct than the HO now in use.

All of this is pure speculation because the decision has already been made for us:  There are probably more "0" narrow gauge trains now in operation using the "On30" design than there are actually scale "On3" railroaders that are strictly correct to scale.  And we're not going to get, yet another group to try a new approach using "S" gauge track for a scale "On36" new group of models.

Paul Fischer

But Bachmann On30 doesn't run off our O-27 and traditional AC transformers. The AF trains do.

I wasn't thinking of a true scale narrow gauge, just something compatible with traditional O gauge trains. Something a little different.

After all, this is the O27 and traditional train forum, not a scale one!  LOL

Let's talk about S-gauge/O-scale:

S-gauge track, in 1:48 O-scale, handily works out to be 3ft. 6in. (42 inches). This Gauge of track is/was pretty common the the former British Empire. It has been called the "Cape" gauge or "Colonial" gauge, among other things. It remains the standard gauge in South Africa (hence "Cape"), where they had fast, modern and large 4-8-4's and Garretts running into the 1990's. I believe that India, Australia and NZ all use/used it, in places. (Canada did not, so far as I know, commonly use it, and the pre-US started shooting at the British before the invention of the railroad (they shot back, too; go figure), so the occasional 42-inch line here was not related to the "colonies".)

One of my many want-to-but-never-will projects was to build a mainline-style, freelance N. American RR using nice S-gauge track and loco/car running gear, built to O-scale.

In an early-1960's Model Railroader mag I saw an article about a freelance O-scale/42" gauge layout built using running gear from American Flyer S-gauge locos and cars. Mostly scratchbuilt from wood (very realistic, also), the steamers were dummies with AF diesel power trucks in the tenders.

Really captured my young imagination. Would like to do it. Never will.

If you look at photos of real narrow gauge RRs from Colorado and the EBT, the engines and cars were noticeably smaller than the  standard gauge equipment.  I just took up an S gauge track loop I had between two O gauge loops and they appeared to be in scale but looked lost the way I had it. If I had a more wide open layout I would run the S as a narrow gauge line.  I fooled around with O gauge trucks on an S scale car plus Marx cars. So did the old RRs.

Any of these projects whether S or ON30 would be fun to do, but I'm like D500.  I love the idea but I know I will never get around to it.