For those not involved in the Railway Modelling hobby, the variations of scale can be confusing. This is not helped when railway modellers switch between referring to scale and gauge.
At its simplest the difference relates as scale being the same as in any other modelling hobby – particularly regarding buildings, people and non-railway vehicles. Gauge refers to the track-gauge (the distance between the rails on the track.
Even here though, there are differences between countries as evidenced by the N-gauge series of models, which in the USA and in Europe translate as 1:160 model scale, but in the UK are judged as 1:148 scale.
Hopefully the following scales list will help to show where the different railway model sizes fit with the other model hobbies products. The list is not definitive, as it is intended to mainly be of use to wargames, and thus only covers the scales commonly used by them.
- Z-gauge
- 1:220 scale eqates to 9mm in wargames scale
- N-gauge (US / EU)
- 1:160 scale equates to 12mm in wargames scale
- N-gauge (UK)
- 1:148 scale -> maps up to 1:144 or 13mm in wargames scale
- TT-gauge
- 1:100 scale equates to 18mm in wargames scale
- HO-gauge
- 1:87 scale equates to 21mm in wargames scale
- OO-gauge
- 1:76 scale equates to 24mm in wargames scale
- S-gauge
- 1:64 scale equates to 29mm in wargames scale
- O-gauge
- 1:48 scale equates to 39mm in wargames scale
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