N Scale V's N Gauge

[wombat457]

Ever since I have been involved in N Scale (1:160) I have been curious as to why there are two scales for N - 1:148th and 1:160th.

Can someone explain why that is and, other than the scale, what the difference is that results in the two scales please.

[longbow]

Same reason that we have OO and HO - in the early days the slightly larger scale allowed British prototypes to fit on continental chassis and more room for grossly oversize wheel rims.

[Bealman]

Yep, all the Poms fault! 

[railsquid]

Ever since I have been involved in N Scale (1:160) I have been curious as to why there are two scales for N - 1:148th and 1:160th.

Three actually - Japan uses 1:150, for similar reasons as the UK (except for Shinkansen models, which are 1:160).

[wombat457]

Wonderful, triple the confusion then     

[Ali Smith]

Quadruple the confusion in fact. N gauge is often referred to in magazines and exhibition (remember them?) programmes as 2mm to the foot, but it aint, whether it's British, Japanese or Rest of World N. 2mm scale is 152:1 and uses a 9.5mm track gauge.

[Mr Sprue]

I've always known it to be 1:148 (UK), 1:150 (Japan) & 1:160 (US)  As detail is pretty hard to see at this scale anyway, I'm happy to stick with 1:148.

[chrism]

For my building/scenic work I'm happy with the degree of inaccuracy that 2mm/ft gives - I probably introduce a bit more half the time (*) when I'm squinting at the ruler anyway 

(*) the other half of the time I probably reverse the inaccuracy, more by luck than judgement though 

[Webbo]

The differences in the scales between N scale and N gauge are about 8%, whereas the difference between HO and OO is more than 15% or close to a 1 in 6 error. Worse, we have the horrible (and could be much better) Rapido couplings for UK N stuff and the horrible tension lock couplings in OO gauge. I suppose you guys in the UK are victims of your heritage, but things could change if you put your minds to it. Forty years ago US equipment was connected by Rapidos mostly, but now knuckle couplers are pretty much universal.

Webbo

[Nbodger]

Yep, all the Poms fault! 

But, But Your a Pom 

[njee20]

Quadruple the confusion in fact. N gauge is often referred to in magazines and exhibition (remember them?) programmes as 2mm to the foot, but it aint, whether it's British, Japanese or Rest of World N. 2mm scale is 152:1 and uses a 9.5mm track gauge.

9.42mm

And to quintuple the confusion you can run N gauge/scale models on 2mm track, just the turnouts that cause problems, and that's more about the clearances than the gauge!

[martyn]

I had always understood the 'N' came from nine (millimetres), the track gauge, n being the first letter of many European languages for the number 9.

There's also been threads elsewhere about why, in the UK at least, it isn't OOO (half OO) though strictly that's more appropriate for 2mm finescale.

Martyn

[Bealman]

Yep, all the Poms fault! 

But, But Your a Pom 

Yep, a ten quid tourist! (Actually by the time I came here in 1974, it was fifty quid  ) 

[Moose2013]

Moose used to seeing "N Scale" as referring to 1:148, 1:150 and 1:160 scales on various North American forums, with caveats to the actual scale where it wasn't 1:160.

Moose gets that, technically, they should have been referring to "N Gauge" instead. It wasn't until Moose was trying to find an "N Scale" specific sub-section on another British MRR forum, that Moose was confronted with this discrepancy between "Gauge" and "Scale" of the "N" variety.

[PLD]

Strictly speaking GAUGE is the distance between the rails; SCALE is the Ratio of Prototype linear dimension to Model linear dimension.
Both get (mis)used to represent a specific combination of a Scale & a Gauge.


N GAUGE is strictly speaking 9mm gauge Track.

In the modelling world the N GAUGE track is commonly used for:

1:160 Scale models of Continental European & North American Standard Gauge prototypes "GERMAN N SCALE"
1:150 Scale models of Japanese Standard Gauge and 3'6" gauge prototypes "JAPANESE N SCALE"
1:148 Scale models of UK Standard Gauge prototypes "BRITISH N SCALE"
1:100 Scale models of UK & Irish 3' Gauge prototypes "TTn3 SCALE"
1:87 Scale models of German & French 60cm & 75cm Gauge prototypes "HO9 SCALE" or "HOe SCALE"
1:76 Scale models of UK 2' - 2'6" Gauge prototypes "009 SCALE"
1:43 Scale models of UK 15" Gauge prototypes "BRITISH 09 SCALE"
1:48 Scale models of AMERICAN 18" Gauge prototypes "AMERICAN 0n18 SCALE"

One N GAUGE, used for a multitude of SCALES, some of which are (Different) N SCALES some of which aren't N SCALES.

All Clear..