DEFINITIONS AND CLASSIFICATIONS

'Miniature'

In the various books about miniature railways, quite a number of authors have commenced by trying to define the term. This can lead one straight into deep water! The obvious definition is to say that a miniature railway is a model of a full size prototype, but then this offends some operators with 'minimum gauge' equipment, not scaled down from any prototype, but built to do a job of work in its own right. Some of these people prefer the terms 'small' or 'minimum gauge' railway to 'miniature'. Indeed no adult would be able to ride upon a railway that was truly 'miniature'!

I take the term 'miniature' to encompass passenger carrying railways, principally of 7¼ to 15in gauges. In 'ABC Minitaure Railways' we added a few lines (e.g. Blackpool Pleasure Beach) using larger gauges but clearly with stock resembling standard gauge prototypes. We excluded very small fairground rides such as 'Peter Pan Railways'.

Gauges

In order to maintain subjects in some sort of order I classify miniature railways into three gauges, 7¼in, 10¼in, and 15in.

This of course can lead to difficulties at the margins but, for the record, I use the following rules:

6in gauge to the USA 7½in gauge I classify with 7¼in gauge. Lower than 6in gauge is outside my principal sphere of interest, even where tracks are laid at ground level.

8in gauge, 9½in gauge, 11in gauge, 12in and some 12¼in gauge I classify with 10¼in gauge. In fact there have been enough 9½in gauge railways to make a separate subject area (2in to the foot scale), but most builders in 9½in gauge have also been active in 10¼, and locomotives have been regauged between 9½in and 10¼in fairly regularly, hence I count them in together. 12¼in gauge is difficult. The four locos built by Thurston (two of which operated for many years at Littlehampton) I count in with 10¼ since they were vaguely 'scale' in appearance and the patterns used in their construction were intended for 10¼in gauge. Their builder simply stretched the gauge as a wheeze to give extra stability.

15in gauge is clearly a separate genre to 10¼, having older origins. I count 12¼in minimum or narrow gauge (Fairbourne, Exmoor Steam Railway) in here. Machines there are so large for their gauge, that they are more directly comparable with 15in than 10¼. As mentoned above, I include some larger gauges into this class (up to 21in) where they seem to me of miniature genre, i.e. they resemble larger prototypes rather than being 'narrow gauge' in their own right. I would commence presumption of 'narrow gauge' from 18in upwards.....

Greg Robinson (Editor of the 'Grand Scales Quarterly') has recently termed 12in to 15in gauges as 'Grand Scales'. This is a nice generic term for larger sized miniature railways. It is right in my view that in applying classifications we should consider the intentions of the different builders, before getting bogged down in distinctions of ¼in in gauge.

Having got all that cleared up, back to the links page, or else to books in print.

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This page last updated: 08/06/2008