Century old scale operation possibilities by Keith Wills
W
e accept scale model railroad operation as having come of age in the 1930’s, particularly
with NMRA two-rail d.c. standards for HO. It was possible to create two-rail layouts with manual or powered switches, crossovers and different com- binations with them. Surprisingly,
it
was eminently possible to make com- plex two-rail, scale-type layouts a hun- dred years ago, before World War I. Mind you, they weren’t electric, but for clockwork and live steam.
When we think of early domestic
clockwork trains, we immediately recall O gauge Ives, American Flyer and Hafner with cast-iron or lithographed tin locomotives and small four-wheel tin cars on a circle, oval or figure eight track. There were others, such as Bing, Bub, Marklin; we bought their wind-ups as well, for electricity was not yet com- mon in American homes. Those who wanted electric trains had to rely on wet cell batteries. The British have al- ways been very serious about their model trains, and they, like us, had inex- pensive Bing, Bub, Carette, Marklin and other German makes. But in large, well-to-do mansions and country es- tates lacking electric power, there was room for expensive, large gauge I, II, III and IV clockwork and live steam trains. Being two-rail, there was also no need to worry about insulation or short cir- cuits. So, what are we talking about? We will consider two Carette scale locomotives: a 25″ Gauge I, Ivatt At- lantic and a 22½″ Gauge I, American outline 4-4-0 Vauclain Compound, prime examples of clockwork and live steam, and see how well they could have been run. They were creme de la creme locomotives, unfortunately with rolling stock not up to their scale pro- portions. Bing made some fine locomo- tives in both modes of operation, as did Marklin, but Carette’s come off looking best. Locomotives such as these and others had wide radius rails to run upon, said to decrease drag and wear on regular, smaller curves. As early as 1906, Bing cataloged O to Gauge IV two-rail track geometry we rarely considered in our early mid- to late-1930’s scale manufacture. This is particularly true of two-rail d.c. and the solutions needed to address annoy-
88
ing short circuits. The Germans made sophisticated machines with gover- nors, reverse and stop devices in clock- work and live steam. Besides left and right hand points, 60- and 90-degree crossings,
full, half and quarter
crossover points and remarkable 60- and 90-degree parallel track crossings.
CARETTE AMERICAN VAUCLAIN COMPOUND AND BRITISH IVATT ATLANTIC
BING CROSSINGS
straight and curve rails, there were ad- ditional rails which one could set to stop or reverse a locomotive. Points were hand-thrown, and what a variety there was. Bing sold double points, three-way points, parallel symmetrical switches, star (wye) switches, left and right hand crossovers,
parallel
Carette cataloged almost identical track as late as 1911, including two and four point curve switches. Enthusiasts had the potential to cre- ate complex prototype track plans using mass-produced modular rails. This was something to which Americans never had access or thought possible in those
MAY 2012
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