Have not been around in awhile as I am still unemployed and quite frankly starting to get desperate.
Anyway, I have made friends with some local modelers, who like myself are noobs and we are stuck with the following problem.
One gentlman would like to make a small layout with a footprint of 6’ long by 2’ wide and for his prototype he wants to model the New Romney station of the RH&D RR located in England. The three of us are all combining help in the construction. Guess we kind of made our own noob club LOL. Since we here in the states seem to be limited to purchasing US prototype locos, which is a shame as Bachmann has a nice collection of British prototypes, he (we) first settled on 00 (4mm) scale and the thought was model all in 1:76 and be done with it.
However the railway itself, all 13.5 miles of it, is in reality a 15" gauge, here is a link if interested:
My suggestion was to try and reproduce as close as possible the true gauge. but we can’t figure out how to do it. In otherwords if he were to go with a 00 scale loco how big would the rest of the scene need to be scale wise for the HO(16.5mm) track to look close to being 15" gauge. Not having anything in front of me I would think an N scale loco would not look right at all in a 1:76 (4mm) scene.
Well, I don’t think you can get there from here. However, I used the following website to get an approximation: http://www.wwmodelclub.org/extra/sd_scalecalc2.htm. I used the following, probably faulty, logic to sort of back into an answer.
First, I used the upper “convert from real life to scale” calculator. I used the HO scale factor of 1:87 and put 56.5 inches in the “real size” box. 56.5 inches is prototype standard gauge of 4 foot 8.5 inches. The calculator says that the full size HO dimension between the rails would be 1.65 inch.
Then I wanted the 1.65 inch to represent 15 inches in some other scale. After some trial and error, I put 1:22.5 (one of the G gauges) into the scale factor box and 15 inches into the real size box. The calculated result comes up as 1.693 inches, which is pretty close to the 1.65 inch that HO scale track measures.
So I might be going out on a limb, but it seems to me that all of the scaled down scenery items, people, full size structures, etc, should be built to a scale of about 1:22.5 if you want HO track to look like it is 15 inch gauge.
The problem will be coming up with locomotives and rolling stock. The website you referenced states that all the locomotives were made 1/3 full size. I think that becomes a scratch building project. I say this because you can’t just look around for equipment that is 1/3 of 1:22.5 scale. Because even though the locos were made 1/3 full size, they still had to accommodate full scale people (note the engineer riding the engine on the website).
Well, ain´t that sumthin´! Carl Arendt´s page gives the proof, that the fun in model railroading has nothing to do with the size of the layout! Just take a look a Prof Klyzr´s Brooklyn 3 am layout!
Back to the OP´s question.
Modeling a 15" gauge line running on HO track is quite common, not only in the UK. It is called Gn15 and there is even an own forum - take a look here
Provided you don’t mind using n scale (2mm=1ft) locos and running gear in an 0 Gauge (That’s 0 Gauge not 0 Scale) environment. 0 Gauge is 7mm = 1ft (1:43) so the 9mm gauge track of N Gauge is pretty much the 15" gauge you’re looking for.
You will find that you can get pretty much everything you want on the internet. You will need to build the rolling stock from scratch but even the armoured train is pretty straight forward.
There are UK societies that will help you.
Weird choice of subject though [%-)][(-D]
PS to go any smaller you’d have to use Z gauge track and possibly S Gauge… and you’d have to make almost everything yourselves.
[:P]
PS again… you can easily get 7mm - 1:43 narrow gauge bits, road vehicles and figures from UK suppliers. Similarly N gauge locos of suitable UK locos are pretty easy to get. You could probably find a US n scale loco to stand in for Dr Syn. For the carriages etc I would simply put n scale trucks under styrene bodies. You could use either an n scale coupler or an 00n9 coupler… 00 scale bods use 9mm track for 24" to 30" gauge models.