Category Archives: Historical

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At the recent Uckfield Model Railway Exhibition, a member of the public tried to suggest that quoting the track gauge to a thousandth of an inch was a bit extreme, and why not use 0.9” instead? Well, ignoring the trite response that 0.9” can also be expressed as 0.900” – and often is in engineering circles to specify the required level of accuracy (which otherwise covers 0.850” to 0.949”), the simple fact is that we don’t actually use the decimal fraction, merely divide 56 ½ inches (standard gauge) by 64, and then express that result in a decimal format… (And yes, I know that results in 0.883”, and the SSMRS standard is 0.884”, but there are technical reasons for that, due to engineering tolerances required for an exact scale wheel profile.) In truth, when I started in S, I didn’t have a track gauge, but I did have a (cheap) vernier calibre which was calibrated in 1/128” of an inch – scale half inches in S scale: I quickly took it to ⅞” (a scale 56 inches, and used the fine adjustment to add the extra single graduation – an extra 1/128”, or 0.008” if you must have it as a decimal!)

I recently realised that when we say S scale is 3/16” to the foot, this is slightly misleading. It is entirely true, but it happens to the result of simplifying 12/64”, which latter possibly expresses the vulgar fraction in a way that explains exactly what we are doing by referencing the scale ratio. But we run up against people thinking we measure everything in terms of how many 1/64” it is (like 120/64” for a scale 10’) which is patently silly but reflects the poor standard of mathematical understanding in everyday life. For the record, when using mental arithmetic it gets much quicker, as ¾” represents 4’ on the prototype, 3” 16 feet and so forth. Or one can buy a “scale ruler” and just that! (Ten feet is 1 ½” – a scale 8’ – plus ⅜” – a a scale 2’ – which results in 1 ⅞”, or ⅛” less than 2”.)

And whilst we are about it, the MRSG and the P4 society invented neither “true scale” model railway standards nor indeed “finescale railway modelling”: they merely promoted it in the most popular scale in the British Isles. Aside from the rarely acknowledged systematic derivation of the track standards for S scale undertaken by Ian Pusey in the early 1960s (which influenced the self-styled “Model Railway Study Group” soon afterwards) people like Jim Richards, working in 7mm scale, had been dividing prototype dimensions by their chosen scale ratio for years beforehand, and Charles Wynne effectively defined finescale back in 1919, when he set himself a standard of accuracy for his own modelling (to the nearest scale inch: maybe not much compared to some, but a lot better than what was going on elsewhere at the time!) The same is true about the benefits of allowing wheels to move up and down, whether sprung, “compensated” or via a mixture of the two, as the prototype often did.

S Scale History Revised!

We like to think that S scale, or what became S scale, was first conceived of in 1896 by Edward Bowness, with his model completed in 1898.

This appears not to be the case, as the following from Locomotive Engineering, Dec. 1893, Vol. 6, No. 12, clearly demonstrates – and look at the fine (scale) flanges! No toy trains here, and live steam to boot.

The accompanying text states:

The Very Smallest Locomotive

We have several times within the last few years given illustrations of extremely small locomotives that were complete in all parts, but that shown in the annexed engraving is the very smallest working locomotive that we have heard about.  It was built by a jeweler, and is the property of Mr. W. E. Gallant, Chicago.  This elaborate toy is built to run on a track 7/8 inch wide and has a total length of 9 ½ inches with tender included.  The cylinders are ½ x 3/8, the driving wheels are 15/16-inch diameter.  The boiler is ¾ x 3 inches.  The total weight of engine and tender is 9 ½ ounces.  Gold, brass, steel, and nickel are the materials of which the engine is made and the pilot is of wood.  It is a real working model and spins along in good shape with its own steam, a spirit lamp providing the required heat.

I wonder what happened to this – it is now at least 125 years old?

Shortline Inspiration 2: the Edgemoor and Manetta

This line in deepest South Carolina is a little gem, and thanks to Chris Ellis, editor of Model Trains (now, after various name changes, Model Trains International) is quite possibly better known in the UK than in its home country! It featured as long ago as 1980, with all 6 turnouts of the line (plus the interchange connection to and owned by the Seaboard Air Line, Atlanta Division) and a somewhat compressed plan. Although I can see the reasoning behind the latter (the plan would fit onto two shelves in the corner of a room, taking up 7′ x 7′, in H0) I feel that the compression goes too far and prototypical operations would be hard to replicate, particularly at the interchange. With Chris’ permission, the plan – along with a later version by Giles Barnabe for N scale – has been reproduced on RMWeb. (Click to open up a link.)

The prototype was a very short, short line about 2.3 miles long which ran from an interchange with the SAL at Edgemoor to the Mannetta mills at Lando (Manetta Mills owned the line). The line even managed to have a plate bridge over a river (with timber trestle approaches, which collapsed at least once!) In short, it had one of many of the features modellers look for.

E&M number 5
Trains latterly consisted of a Porter 0-4-0 tank engine, hauling up to two freight cars at a time! Freight was primarily coal in, and blankets out, generally requiring hoppers and boxcars. Trains were worked with the engine at the Lando (terminal) end: pushing up the hill to the interchange – sometimes pausing half-way to pump up more air – and pulling down to the mills. When delivering coal, the engine was trapped at the end of the coal ramp spur whilst the hoppers were emptied; coal was also delivered to the boiler house in the same manner. The engine itself was coaled by shovel, from a roadside truck whilst standing on the loopneck at the end of the line. The railroad also owned a flat car which never left Lando: once the day’s switching and shifting was done, it was left between warehouses separated by the tracks at the start of the loop to act as a platform allowing access between them! It had to be pulled out of the way at the start of the raiload shift, and put back at the end. The mills worked three shifts in 24 hours, but the railroad only operated for one of them. At the interchange, empties and deliveries were dropped off by passing ACL/SAL freights, which collected loaded cars and empty hoppers which had been left on the house track at Edgemoor. In earlier times there was even a passenger service, and the line ran with 0-4-4T and 0-4-2T power.

As big as a train can get on the E&M!

It was the last steam-worked non-tourist line in the USA, but operations ceased in July 1975 when the engine failed its boiler inspection. Trucks took over, and that was more or less that, although the loco was still there nine years later!

With a requirement of a small loco (it might be possible to use the old Rex loco as a starting point in S – anyone have one for sale?), half-a dozen boxcars, a couple of coal hoppers a gondola, a flat car and maybe a tank wagon, this would not be a difficult line to equip. I have sketched out an idea for a 12’8″ x 8’10” spare room, designed to feature most of the features of the line. Although I have had to come down to 42″ radius curves, I have used number 8 turnouts as even with a small engine and 40′ long freight cars, this simply looks better than anything tighter. If anyone wishes it, I can supply the plan as a Templot file, or – if you let me know the paper size – as a pdf for printing. There were warehouses both sides of the loop, the spurs served the coal traffic.

edgemoor_and_manetta

For further reading search out the following magazine articless:
Jim Boyd, “The Last Steam Shortline”, Railroad Model Craftsman, March 1972
Chris Ellis, “The Edgemoor and Manetta”, Model Trains, May 1980
Giles Barnabe, “Edgemoor and Manetta Revisited”, Scale Model Trains, May 1986
Giles Barnabe, “Edgemoor and Manetta RR”, Model Trains International, Issue 101
Finally, the Arcadia Publishing book, “Lando”, by Pual Scott Williams of the Lando-Manetta Mills History Center (2007, ISBN 9780738552682) has a lot of information, including the Sanborn Insurance map of the Manetta Mills and railroad tracks at Lando.