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Most model railroaders do not realize that their model trains actually
incorporate a number of compromises. In the old days when we were happy
to have any injection-molded box car kit, we expected compromises --- we
knew that the real thing had different ends, and those door claws were
a necessary evil for the mass market. However, in recent years, there has
been a proliferation of excellent car kits, and most of these compromises
have been eliminated. Now, a highly accurate model of almost any prototype
is available to almost anyone with a little bit of time and money. Highly
accurate except one thing --- the wheels.
Because we spend most of our time looking at models, instead of the real thing, most of us hardly realize that the wheels on HO scale model trains are almost twice as wide as they should be. These inaccurate wheels impact a host of other elements in our models. The frames on steam locomotives must be narrower, and their cylinders wider; the sideframes on diesels and freight cars are almost flush with the sidesills; truss rods and brake rigging get shoved around to all sorts of improbable locations just to accomodate the wheels. The most important impact of the too-fat wheels however, is felt not in the rolling stock, but in the main element of our scenery --- the track. Those fat wheels with the big flanges require trackwork that is equally coarse. In order to accomodate the thick flanges and narrow back-to-back distances, flangeways on HO standard are more than twice as wide as the equivalent prototype flangeways. The Proto:scale movement addresses these inaccuracies. The idea is to make wheels and track as close to scale as possible, while maintaining operability. The Proto:87 special interest group is especially interested in developing standards and techniques for modelling close-to-scale wheels and track in the common scale of 1:87.1 (HO scale). The Proto:87 Special Interest Group (SIG) is a non-profit group whose goal is to develop and promote practical and reliable standards and construction techniques for high-fidelity wheels and track in HO scale. It is a very loose organization, modeled more or less after an e-mail list. The only requirement for membership is an interest in Proto:87. We produce a newsletter which is mailed to about a hundred people who have sent in a little money to defray the mailing costs. Otherwise, electronic copies are available here when I get around to it. |
René Gourley: <info@proto87.org> Proto:87 mailing list: <proto87@onelist.com>
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