Talk:O scale

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April 26, 2007

In the section "O in the United States", there is a discussion of Kris Model Trains (KMT). Kris Model Trains, Inc. was the operation of Andrew Kriswalus, 121 Smithfield Drive (P.O. Box 754), Endicott, NY 13760, phone 607-748-7613. Please correct the spelling of "Kriswalus" in your encyclopedia. Note: members of his family still live at this address.

In addition to the high impact styrene box cars, stock cars, and reefers made in O Scale from the Kusan Model Trains dies, Andy Kriswalus made replacement frames for Lionel standard gauge and O gauge locos, and he sold repainted Gilbert S gauge cars in many railroads' designs.

Thank you, Marshall Reed 76.195.37.26 20:46, 26 April 2007 (UTC) m.j.reed@sbcglobal.net[reply]

Naming Conventions (zero or Oh)[edit]

This page has a title of O scale whereas throughout the article the terminology is correctly noted as 0 (zero) gauge. The reason that the digit used for this naming convention is the number zero, not the letter O, is that Gauge 0 is the lower progression from the older-established Gauges of 3, 2 and 1. What I propose is to change the title for this page to 0 gauge and redirect the following to it - O gauge, O scale and 0 scale. Adrianmc 07:01, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • I must object to this redirect since O gauge is overwhelmingly more popular in the US than in the UK, and therein it's universally known as just that, "O gauge". Again, this is an encyclopedia of the now, not an encyclopedia of the historical. As pointed out in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, "Articles that focus on a topic specific to a particular English-speaking country should generally conform to the usage and spelling of that country". While the "O vs 0" variation is not national variation in the sense implied by the guideline, it is relatively polarized along geographical divisions, meaning you don't see US or German hobbyists calling their layout "H0" instead of "HO". The opposite is not true, however, and the O-based notation appears to be present even in the UK, at least if we are to believe the online catalogs and materials of UK-based model railroad manufacturers such as Peco and Dapol. --Agamemnon2 11:42, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
>You don't see [...] German hobbyists calling their layout "H0" instead of "HO".< Actually, you do. In German the scale is called Ha-null (H0). -- Picapica (talk) 03:32, 9 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • To be fair, I seem to be confused with the continental European notation, who indeed are using the 0. Chalk it down to my reading too many American model railroad magazines. The case for O, however, stands. Since we're writing in English, we should be using either the American or the British standard of model railroad scale notation. And in the absence of any other qualifier, the American notation should triumph by sheer weight of numbers. --Agamemnon2 11:52, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
My experience is that the vast majority of usage among English speakers is the letter 'O', rather than the numeral '0', when referring to anything remotely recent. If the article is about the gauge's historical origins, the '0' may be used, and it appears to be used extensively in Europe. However, common English usage should win out. I don't believe there is much disagreement between English-speaking nations, either - I know British usage favors the letter as well. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 12:05, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that O seems to be always used in the UK and on any US based websites I've looked at. There should probably be a note somewhere about the origin of the name coming from the number from the "lower progression from the older-established Gauges of 3, 2 and 1" but this is historical. Also the fact that it is called 0 in the NEM standard should be mentioned. --Zabdiel 09:51, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Actually, if you look at Hornby packaging and catalogues, it uses zeroes. Those zeroes are pronounced "oh" (explicitly, in the case of Hornby's old "Dublo" (="Double-oh") sub-brand), but they're written as zeroes. People often pronounce "zero" as "oh" to remove a naming inconsistency - all the other digits have single-syllable names, as do all the letters of the alphabet except "W", so calling zero "oh" is arguably fixing a "bug" in the English language. So we used to say "Oh-one for London", and James Bond is "Double-Oh Seven". But he's supposed to be "007", not "OO7". ErkDemon (talk) 15:17, 28 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I remember Lionel's various publications and manuals in the '70s (many of which looked as if they'd been printed decades prior) mentioning O and randomly intermixing "O27" and "O-27", but always using the letter O. At least coming from the toy end of the O-scale market in the U.S., the letter O appears to be dominant. Lionel appears to be continuing their mixed "O27" and "O-27" usage, at least in the "About Gauge" guide on Lionel's website. Darwinianphysicist (talk) 22:15, 14 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with Adrianmc that the title should be "0 scale", with "O scale" and others as redirects. Both 0 and O are used, so it's important that redirects are in place so the article can be found with either. But the original and still standing definition for the name of this scale denotes it by the number 0 similar to the preceding scales 1, 2 and 3. That's why the number 0 is used in the article and should be used in the title. Agamemnon2 is incorrect in asserting that 0 is historical - it is in fact widely used by both manufacturers and hobbyists. As long as that is the case, it is not important how many people use O versus 0; 0 remains the correct name with O a common misunderstanding of the name, fortunately a benign one since it introduces no ambiguity. Those are facts that don't change with how many people think the standard's name is O versus 0, unless "everyone" where to adopt O which would make it a defacto standard. But again, that's just not the case. Note that a similar 0/O confusion also exists for the derived scales 00 and H0 (half-0). Now to all of you who are used to call it O and don't want to change your habit, remember that this discussion only affects how you write the name name. You can still pronounce it "Oh" which is an English spoken word that may refer to either the number or the letter. For example, the number 0 in a phone number is almost always pronounced "Oh", but that doesn't mean it's correct to write the phone number with an O. WinTakeAll (talk) 03:20, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
... The impression that I'm getting is that "international" manufacturers still use the original technically-correct "zeroes" when writing this stuff down, and that it's US-centric organisations and companies that have settled on using capital letter "Oh"s instead of the numeral, as a local custom. ErkDemon (talk) 15:17, 28 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not touching this page, since I have no particular interest in O scale, however it needs to be noted that the "official" definition in North American is indeed O scale with an alpha O, as defined by the NMRA (see: http://www.nmra.org/standards/sandrp/pdf/S-1_2.pdf). Do with that what you will... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.90.45.10 (talk) 10:14, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

On further analysis, I did modify the section on "O-27," since that was strictly an American phenomenon and American naming conventions should thus apply. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.90.45.10 (talk) 10:17, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I don't know how to add notes in Wikipedia, so apologies if done wrong, but there is a problem with the conversion of 4 ft 1.5 in to metric in the 'Wide or Narrow Guage' section (1. in the second subsection) - it converts it as 1 m, whereas it should be about 1.26m. I don't understand how this conversion routine works (or doesn't!), so I haven't amended it.

It was because the conversion was done with zero decimal places showing so 1.26m was displayed as 1m - now corrected to show 2 decimal places as you suggested.

Relevance[edit]

Section 2.1.3 referring to OO and HO isn't really relevant to a page on O gauge. I'd suggest deleting the second part of this section, the implementation in other scales/guages of narrow gauge and the resulting (in)accuracies should be moved to pages relating to those scales/guages.

Images[edit]

Please include some non-models in the images to provide a visual clue as to the size of the scale. Taemyr (talk) 09:36, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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