I was looking for a 1/35 railway bridge and came across a stone bridge sold on temu and from eBay vendors in China. It appears to be made out of plywood, is it worth is and has anyone here bought one?
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If that’s the style you’re looking for, someone here has done one using building foam. The effect is fantastic.
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Maybe this topic could be of interest:
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I believe the Temu one is laser-cut thin wood, and is tab in slot construction. You may be disappointed with the result.
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Thank you for the responses. I’ll check out that thread @Uncle-Heavy i didn’t see it when i was searching.
@Biggles50 my biggest fear is hating the result.
@18bravo i think a foam one would be easier after some trial and error.
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Contact Gman69. Here is some of his work from a few years ago where he used phone to create Stone and brickwork.
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@JPTRR ill try and get ahold of him, thank you
One other thing I just thought of. 1/32 is a model railroad scale, they call it Number One scale or One Scale or something like that. 1/32. Marklin sells it. It’s pricey though. I can only imagine that number one scale bridge would be a couple hundred dollars.
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Gauge 1
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Depends on where you live and apparently, what era. On the previous RailRoad Modeling I posted about various gauges and their terms. Checking the National Model Railroader Association finds they’ve removed the page that deals with these unconventional, or rather little used, scales and gauges. Apparently it first received one of the following terms in 1909 in a British model railroad magazine. The following is from Wikipedia, so we know it’s ironclad.
originated from 1 gauge or “gauge one” which was first used in Europe and Britain and used to model standard gauge trains in the scale of 1:32.
According to another article, back a hundred and ten years ago there were four common scales, “Number 0-3”. Supposedly today’s O scale started out as No. 0, “Number Zero” verses alphabet “O”, a mispronunciation of “zero”, and all that tomfoolery. I’ve read at least four different names for model railroad’s 1/32 (1:32): 1 Gauge; Gauge 1; One Gauge; Gauge One. Märklin is the manufacturer I’m most familiar with and they refer to it as 1 Gauge. In Britain we have The Gauge 1 Model Railway Co.
The common denominator is the word ‘gauge’ instead of ‘scale’.
Would 1 gauge not be G gauge?
Yes. 1 gauge is part of G.
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True.
Which is one of model railroading’s idiosyncrasies, the perennial use of “gauge” where “scale” is more accurate - even though few scales are precise. (1/35 is 8.709 mm, and 10 mm is 1/30.5.) From what I read, track was developed for G gauge models. Eventually, the purpose of revived 1 gauge was to scale standard-gauge 4 ft 8 1⁄2 track to fit 45 mm model track. That scale is 1/32, even though the standard-gauge in 1/32 is only 44.8468 mm. This is all splitting hairs. Ah, the joys of trying to synchronize standard and metric.
Group, while scratching around looking up the above discussion, I found something interesting.
Occasionally, someone asks about rails for 1/35.
US and Russian track were similar, i.e., use of spikes to hold the rail to tie (sleeper) plates, as were German and British and French, i.e., used a screw to secure the rail to sleepers. Both of the following vendors sell rail and other components separately. Especially for the US vendor, all of the rail would be huge for 1/35. The heaviest rail used in the US was 155 lbs/yard. But hey, you can find rail for 1/35 dioramas.
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It is not shown still in production but here is Märklin’s Gauge 1 - Article No. 56291 Arched Bridge. They made a smaller truss bridge. That doesn’t really help, but there are model company options for “military scale” railroad bridges.
Arched Bridge. | Maerklin US
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Not to mention the H0/00 vs H0 discrepancy, same track width, both portraying normal gauge (not narrow track, not wide track)
In model railroading “Gauge” refers to the distance between the rails. Scale is the relative size of everything else. ON3 railroading is narrow gauge O scale (in US 1/48 scale, and in Europe 1/43 scale) rolling stock with the wheels usually gauged to run on HO (1/87 scale) track.
The subject of model scales fascinates me and I enjoy talking about it. It was a couple months ago, I think in one of our discussions, that somebody pointed out that a lot of the model scales are based on architectural scales. Makes a lot of sense. Draftsmen and machinist/modelers were skilled with the units of measurement and had all their rulers and tools ready to go. There are still a few scales that simply baffle me (1/700), with consideration of the coincidence versus causation chicken-or-the-egg paradox, and “box scales” in the mix. 1/35 was simply Tamiya’s expedient for making a small model large enough to accept batteries and electric motors on a gearbox, in with the popularity of those models led to a seismic shift in standardizing military models thusly. Oh, I did recently read that 1/350 is an old architectural scale so perhaps that is where 1/700 comes from? Maybe not, I suspect 1/700 as being a hybrid of box scale and metric measurements. Coincidence? Maybe the truth is in the tower of london, deep in a vault in switzerland, or in the hold of the ship that sank while carrying Revell’s 1/32 Japanese aircraft tooling? I will ask during my next meeting with the Bilderberg Group and the Tri-Lateral Commission.
I think the HO v OO is not really a discrepancy, it’s an expediency. (For what I’ve read, HO is a German creation from the 1930s, trying to make something smaller than O scale, which is 7 mm to a foot in England, and slightly larger for some German manufacturers of the era.). Discussing this subject a while ago I found out that there is actual OO 1/76 track available, but I’m guessing it is not as mass produced and thus as affordable as HO. In many ways I like the British/European metric system of scale better than the standard unit of measurement scales. I do not know if or when Continental Europe used the British standard system of feet and inches etc, when they converted to metric, but it seems that almost every continental European rail system built their main lines in feet-gauges. I prefer the ones that build their narrow gauge systems in metric. We see the same idiosyncrasies in military gun calibers, such as the good old 75 mm “three inch” vs the actual 3-in. 76.2 mm, etc. but once again, in model railroading, HO & OO scales is another clash of units of measurement. HO running on HO track is a scale, while OO running on HO track is a gauge. As an aside, HO rolling stock can run on N scale track, which is very close to 2 ft narrow gauge in 1/87, which still keeps HO as a scale, because the two-foot narrow gauge scales very very close to N track. Likewise, HO track in O scale (1/48) scales very close to prototype 30-inch narrow gauge, so On30.
1/24 1/48 and 1/96 are very easy scales if you’re dealing with standard scale because you can easily break things down to six or three-inch units; 1/32 is 3/8” so 3/16 is six scale inches, but then you have to break down into 32nds of an inch to go smaller. Achievable, but irritating. With metric, 4 mm to a foot is 1/76 - easy. Why UK settled on 7mm for O instead of 8 mm, again I’ll have to look that up next time I’m in the Archivio Apostolico Vatican.
In summary, OO is a scale - a very noble scale, 1/76 - but put it on HO track and it is a gauge.
The track width was intentionally narrowed so that the axle-boxes of the 00 scale carriages would fit inside the width of the carriages. British rolling stock is narrower than European so it would have been difficult to make a functioning axle with bearings fit under the carriages.
Zen ze Germans measured ze track width (gauge) ant figuret out zat ze proper scale vas 1:87, jawohl.
1/76 is a rather strange choice since 1/72 is an inch-based scale, 1/76 must have come from somewhere else (4 mm to 1 foot, a ruddy hybrid scale, the Brits adopting metric, inch by inch …)
Märklin invented 0-gauge back in 1900, the smallest that could be made operable back then,
32 mm track width (1435 / 32 = 1:44.834), 16,5 is a tad larger than half of 32, compromises compromises)