Do not post any thing!!!
smaller size, had O when i was a little kid and i played with some of my O trains for a awhile and just decided they were to big and took up to much space. especially for teens like me who don’t have that much room to work with
O Gauge has many more things to simulate a real train???
You mean like that third rail down the middle?
This isn’t going to turn into an MTH rah-rah thing, is it?
HO layouts actually fit in a reasonable amount of space. It has the widest variety of products available for it. It is the best size for me from a standpoint of being able to handle the rolling stock and being able to add details without a microscope handy.
If you drop an HO locomotive on your foot, it doesn’t break your foot as well as the locomotive.
HO tends to make better economic sense - more bang for your buck as it were.
It’s pretty rare that I see anything as detailed in O as I do in HO - I suppose the Atlas O products are, but I haven’t seen many of those.
You can have 2-rail O scale though - it’s growing in popularity over here due to Bachmann offering some locos and stock in RTR brass (unpainted, but for the price of a complete kit you can have a sweet-running model that just needs paint and decals). Plastic car kits for around £25 complete (only needing paint and glue to assemble) are also available - roughly what we pay for a Walthers HO streamline passenger car. Finescale O modelling for anyone with the ability to build a plastic kit, there’s even a company offering RTR wagons for a little more.
I think going up in scale has its disadvantages too - the larger the scale, the more detail you need to add. Personally I prefer G for my large-scale models, but this is mainly because it’s the most readily available way to run European narrow gauge prototypes. I feel HO is better for modelling long freight and passenger trains as you can run lengthy trains without needing a spare field or warehouse.
Everything in 3 rail O seems like a gimmick. Do we really think talking crew cabs are realistic. “Ready on track one you have a green light”. Get real. HO has TWO rails which is why I like it. I will take scale thank you. I will leave the toys to those who need them.
Yes your right, $1,000 locomotives are definitly toys. The acela that is coming out who cares it is only a toy. The 3 rail deal isnt much of a deal at all! O gauge is very valuble. So if you think a $350.00 acela is very valuble thats just… The O gauge is able to give more value. Im not saying HO is bad. O gauge seems much more collectible. Look at the Q of the day and give it some hard thought.
There are different types of value. What you can sell something for is one measure, but its use to you on you layout, for your purposes is another. If the price was equal, more people would still model in HO than in O because they can fit more of what they want in the space they have, but it is still big enough to work with. For me, N is more valuable, because it will give me what I want in the space I have. If you don’t intend to sell something, then what someone else would pay for it has nothing to do with its value. How well it serves you purpose is the only measure of value that matters.
(This is going to be fun.) And plastic locos that go “chuff-chuff” out of their tenders are any more “real”? [(-D]
BTW, I am strictly HO…for now. I, too, can’t get past that third rail. However, two rail is available, and my eyes are not getting any better. One day, I will genuflect to the O-Guage gods, and feel well served by all of the wonderful people who contributed to its development over the years. Nothing is for ever.
[#ditto][#ditto][#ditto][#ditto]O is a better collectible. HO is better in detail size and readily avalible products.
ICMR
Happy Railroading.[swg][swg]
“The only reson why people have HO guage is because it is chaeper in price and it has only two rails.”
I don’t think I’ve ever read a more INCORRECT statement about why folks prefer one scale over another. The choice of a modeling scale is as diverse as there are scales to model, ranging from Z to Large Scale (and even beyond). Price is a consideration for hobbyists in any scale–most of them, at least–but there are a great many other factors that go into deciding which scale one might prefer to model. Space might be one consideration, and product variety and availability another. Ditto for the era or type of railroading one wants to model. And there are other considerations, as well.
HO is, by far, the most popular of all the modeling scales. It got to be that way for a reason, and that reason is most definitely not related to price in many or most cases.
You’re absolutely correct. Also, Chocolate Ice Cream is a better value than Chocolate chip. Hot dogs are a better value than tuna sandwhiches. Coffee is a better value than Iced Tea. Snow is a better value than the hot sun.
And most importantly, Red is a better value than Green. Anyone who doesn’t agree with me is wrong.
I’m glad we cleared these things up.
Obviously, few of you have seen a Kohs offering in O. . . . Not all O is Marx (NOT that there is ANYTHING wrong with Marx!).[8D]
O has many more advantages than just detail. It has heft. I have a Mikado in O that weighs 11 pounds. When it rumbles across the layout, it rumbles. The rails creak. Bridges vibrate with the weight. The most detailed, accurately scaled HO steamer seems like a [gasp] toy [/gasp] in comparison, just because that big mike has attributes of a real engine that HO cannot match: weight, mass, and sound.
In any case, “If it ain’t 1:1 scale AND generating revenue, it’s a toy.”
[;)]
No, you are wrong!! Iced Tea is definitely a better value. Uhhh, what’s snow?
You have to differentiate between the varieties of “O gauge” that you are talking about here. Most of the replies to this post are talking about three rail, what everybody thinks of when you say “Lionel.”
Three rail, very often refered to as hi-rail, is not really intended to be a scale representation of railroading. Curves are incredibly sharp, there are three rails, sometimes made of rolled metal sheet, rather than a prototypical cross section.
Engines and rolling stock may be out of true scale proportion, etc. This variety can be very collectible, very expensive, and highly desirable. BUT, it won’t be a convincing representation of its prototype. Nor was it intended to be, since its origins were with toy trains.
Moving along, current offerings from MTH and other suppliers are closer to scale, and could be favorably compared HO offerings of a number of years ago as far as fidelity to prototype are concerned.
Finally, there’s O scale, as practiced by the scale modelers, scratch builders, and others. Curves are 5 or 6 feet in radius at a minimum, structures are contest quality, and engines and rolling are detailed exquisitely, very often to match a particular engine of the class modeled. Passenger trucks can have working swing motion suspensions, engines can be fully suspended and equalized. If you ever go to one of the O Scale National conventions, the contest room is definitely worth seeing.
The mass of a train in O scale conveys a certain quality also, particularly if you’re right next to it. One of the most convincing scale representations I’ve ever seen was built by a friend of mine. A heavy freight engine started a freight train out of the yard, and the train started from a crawl and accelerated. The thing that most impressed me, however, was the complete smoothness with which the engine started from zero and slowly accelerated. It conveyed a feeling of limitless power, much like you would sense in the presence of a steam engine in rea
Get real. People don’t use O scale because it is more realistic. Because its NOT. I can spend around $225 and get a VERY nice looking passenger train in HO. O scale is a joke, I model the T&P and Lionel came out with a 4-8-2 mountain painted in Eagle colors. They used a COAL tender, T&P NEVER used coal (even IHC at least offered its 2-6-0 with an oil tender, and that was a cheap engine). The smokebox was painted grey not white, their was no elesco water heater and it was going for over $1000. I can get a Brass T&P 2-10-4 with excellent detail for $1200. Now tell me how O is more valuable and more realistic. It may be a better value to collect but I dont want to spend money to see something sit. I want to see it run on the track. You can model the same thing in HO with about 1/4th the money which means you can have MORE trains, which we all want. 40 accurate locomotives are more valuable to me than 10 unaccurate locos.
“The only reson why people have HO guage is because it is chaeper in price and it has only two rails.” Ive never heard a dumber statement in my life than that one. And O can’t be more valuble than HO because valuble isn’t even a word.
S is best!!! small like ho but big enough to see details and no 3rd rail.
Man, Im only a kid.
Great, a new low. Now we have an 11 year old starting a flame war over which scale is a better value and proclaiming “The only reson why people have HO guage is because it is chaeper in price and it has only two rails.”
All I can do is shake my head. Good night gentlemen. I’m just not up to watching yet another world war break out here tonight. I thought we had gotten past this sort of thing.
Stop posting !!!
With all due respect, you are not very knowledgeable about O scale.
If you are talking about what Lionel does, and comparing that with HO scale, you are comparing apples and oranges. That would be like me talking about an HO trainset that you can buy at Kmart or Walmart, and comparing it to PBL’s S scale locomotives, or The Car Works or RY Models O scale brass offerings. To repeat: Lionel does NOT make scale equipment, never has, never will. But then again, modelers in O scale don’t collect Lionel trains. That is a completely separate hobby. Still trains, but toy trains, not scale.
To give you another example, there is a small company called Right-O’-Way. They have been manufacturing and selling fine scale track frogs, point rails, tie plates, rail braces, etc. for something like 30 years in O scale. When was the last time you saw an HO layout, or even a diorama, that had rail braces ? As far as I know, you can’t get them.
Lastly, the Proto-87 and Proto-48 movements are relatively recent trends, which were originally developed under a different name in the 1960’s and 1970’s, I believe. Gene Deimling, Bob Brown and Cliff Grandt were some of the original proponents of this O scale concept, called fine scale at the time. Gene Deimling is still active in the Proto-48 hobby,