Decauville 0-4-0 1:22.58 Scale

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Pontiacguy1
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Re: Decauville 0-4-0 1:22.58 Scale

Post by Pontiacguy1 »

Can you not find some drawings of standard gauge cars and start there? If you scale up a narrow gauge car to fit standard gauge, it will be wider than the locomotive and will look funny. That's what people do in large scale (7 1/2" gauge), so that everything will run on the same track, and the visual difference is striking. The narrow gauge equipment looks much larger and is a lot heavier. The standard gauge stuff (1/8 scale or 1 1/2" to the foot) is about 15 inches wide. When you do the same calculations to a 3' narrow gauge car, they come up to be about 20" or 21" wide, somewhere in there.

I've shown this picture before, but the difference between narrow gauge and standard gauge is very striking. When you try to make them run on the same tracks as each other, the narrow gauge equipment will be physically much larger. I also found this picture from the old 7+ railroader magazine which shows it very well. It scales both down to run on 15" gauge, but it will be the same for any other gauge.
9733310837_25a5e984c0_c.jpg
scale_gauge.gif
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diddler
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Re: Decauville 0-4-0 1:22.58 Scale

Post by diddler »

Thank you for the input Ponntiacguy, I have much to learn :-)
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diddler
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Re: Decauville 0-4-0 1:22.58 Scale

Post by diddler »

ok if you take the drawing I posted and timed the dimensions by 1.413 , the 95 would come to 5.2 " my Engine is 7.205 wide, the Height would be 1.929 to the center of the bumper, just a little higher than the engine ( 1.654), and the track gauge would be 2.5. What do you think?
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Pontiacguy1
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Re: Decauville 0-4-0 1:22.58 Scale

Post by Pontiacguy1 »

I guess your engine must be narrow gauge. I don't know. To me... Things should look like they belong together. Try to make your cars about the same width as your locomotive, and make sure that the couplers match up height wise. So your difference of more than 1/4" off on the coupler heights isn't going to work very well. 1/4" height difference in 1/8 scale is tolerable. But that would be a pretty big difference in your size. You can make your coupler heights (or buffer heights) the same, and that should work out ok. What you really want is something that LOOKS right, at least in my opinion. If your engine is 7" wide and your cars are 5" wide, that's an obvious mis-match and says that they may not be in the same scale.

If your locomotive is 7" wide (roughly), and is in 1:22.6 scale, that would indicate the original locomotive was REALLY wide, coming in at over 13 feet wide! Standard gauge trains in the US are approximately 10 feet wide. Something is off here... Maybe I'm just looking at it wrong or I'm missing something. Wouldn't be the first time.
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diddler
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Re: Decauville 0-4-0 1:22.58 Scale

Post by diddler »

Ah, so the car and engine should be the same width. I agree with you, I want it to be correct, that is why I ask so many questions. Yes my little engine is a narrow gauge, I am going to school on this one so I can build a larger locomotive later :-). As always thank you for your input, it helps me a lot.

The more I try to understand this scaling and track gauge , the deeper I fall in to confusion. Does anyone know of an article/ book I may read to help me understand.
If 1:22.58 is 22.58 times smaller that the original, that would make my loco 13ft wide, I am just not grasping the concept. I am sorry for not getting this.
Pontiacguy1
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Re: Decauville 0-4-0 1:22.58 Scale

Post by Pontiacguy1 »

Something is off here... The scale of your locomotive must be off. If it is narrow gauge, then it would be in a larger scale. Most 3' narrow gauge equipment is 8' wide, at least in the US. Standard Gauge is 10' wide in the US. I believe your locomotive is a narrow gauge locomotive built to a larger scale than 1:22.6 which is the scale for standard gauge trains running on 2 1/2" gauge track.

Gauge is ALWAYS the distance between the insides of the two rails. Gauge has nothing to do with Scale. Gauge describes the track that the trains run on. Scale describes the relationship size-wise between the model and the original full-size locomotive. So for instance: a locomotive with a gauge of 3 1/2" and a scale of 1:16 (or 3/4" to the foot) would be a model of a standard gauge (4' 8 1/2") locomotive.

Let's see if I can help out a little bit with the confusion. I may have a few of these wrong myself:

Gauge 1 (45mm or 1 3/4" between the rails): Standard gauge trains would be 1:32 scale, European meter gauge would be 1:22.6 scale (think LGB here), 3' gauge trains would be 1:20.3 scale (also known as F scale or 15mm scale).

Gauge 3 (2 1/2" or 64mm between the rails): Standard gauge trains would be 1:22.6 scale (which is also 17/32" to the foot scale), European meter gauge would be 15.72 scale, and 3' gauge trains would be 14.4 scale.

3 1/2" gauge: standard gauge trains would be 1:16, or 3/4":1', European meter gauge would be 11.25 scale, and 3' narrow gauge would be 10.3 or roughly 1:10 scale size.

4 3/4" gauge: standard gauge trains would be 1:12 or 1" : 1' , European meter gauge would be 8.3 scale, and 3' narrow gauge would be 7.6 or pretty close to 1/8th scale. There are some builders who build models of 3' narrow gauge equipment in 1/8th scale, to run on 4 3/4" gauge tracks.

7 1/4" and 7 1/2" gauge: standard gauge trains would be 1/8th scale or 1 1/2":1' (sometimes people scale up and use 1.6":1' so that it comes out correctly for the slightly-wide 7 1/2" gauge), European Meter gauge would be 5.25 scale in 7 1/2" gauge, and 3' narrow gauge trains would come out to 4.8 scale, which is also 2 1/2" : 1'.

There are other track gauges (2' gauge comes to mind), that I didn't get into here, just to save some space.

Here is a good article written by Rick Henderson that might help explain it better: https://www.discoverlivesteam.com/magaz ... index.html
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diddler
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Re: Decauville 0-4-0 1:22.58 Scale

Post by diddler »

thank you for your input Pontiacguy, Now you see my confusion concerning my loco.
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Re: Decauville 0-4-0 1:22.58 Scale

Post by Pontiacguy1 »

Looked up the Decauville 0-4-0s, found out the track gauge for this was 60cm. At least some of them were 60cm, but they made different gauges of locomotive. Well, 60cm is pretty close to 24" gauge! That makes a little bit more sense now! for a 2 1/2" gauge model of this locomotive, the scale would be approximately 1:10, not 1:22.6. That means that your 7 1/4" wide model would have been approximately 6 feet wide on the prototype, which is pretty well dead-on for a 24" gauge locomotive and rolling stock. Maybe you can find some drawings that are narrow gauge prototypes that are 24" gauge or 60cm gauge, and then scale them to 2.5" gauge track. That should come out really close.

Anyway, I think that you have built a beautiful model, no matter what the scale or gauge. I like it especially because it is 2 1/2" gauge, and not much on this continent is built to this gauge any more.
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diddler
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Re: Decauville 0-4-0 1:22.58 Scale

Post by diddler »

I have found some more info on this, with your input and the info I have found, the water just became a little less muddy. Thank you very much for your kind words. I love building this locomotive and look forward to building another one but larger. If you like my build now, wait until it is finished, now you can see why I want to have cars built to go with it . I still have not received the boiler back from the welder, cant wait to finish working on that when it comes home :-)
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diddler
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Re: Decauville 0-4-0 1:22.58 Scale

Post by diddler »

Does anyone know where I can get PTFE C25 25% Carbon 1 1/4 dia?
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diddler
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Re: Decauville 0-4-0 1:22.58 Scale

Post by diddler »

I found the material, and this article https://modelengineeringwebsite.com/Ste ... rings.html I am going to make this ring for the engine, The article makes sense.
Playing with the loco, still waiting for my boiler to return, although the engines run well, I want them to be perfect. See I made my seals out of virgin Teflon, It don't look to be a long term solution. This PTFE C25 has all the data to work well with the application.
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NP317
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Re: Decauville 0-4-0 1:22.58 Scale

Post by NP317 »

Try McMaster-Carr:
https://www.mcmaster.com/ptfe

Might not be the carbon-filled version...
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