I think the americans tend to talk about their locos in terms of scale, same sort of size as our 2.5" gauge which you should be able to find designs for such as GLR

Edited By JasonB on 10/01/2021 19:03:32

Victor Shattock was born in Devon, emigrating to Calgary before relocating his family to California.

His American standard gauge (spirit-fired) steam engines were scratch built at 1/2" scale to run on 2.5" gauge track (e.g. same as pre-War Gauge 3) and his railroad was set-up indoors in the basement. The details are given here – and there are links to some old black & white movies on YouTube that are very interesting.

Victor Shattock – Gauge 3 in the USA

Brainspark – As far as I'm aware, there are no modern drawings (or castings) for US style G3 engines available at the moment. LBSC did produce some US 'style' designs for 2.5" in the early 1930's – some details can be found in the N2.5GA "Overseas designs" but they may not really suit your needs. See: N2.5GA Designs

However, in G3 it is quite possible to fabricate the parts rather than use castings but the designs may be more of a problem. I don't know what is available in the US apart from Kozo Hiraoka's engines (the Pennsy A3 might be a good start and could be scaled down).

Regards,

IanT

My understanding is that the main following of 1/2" scale in the USA is for narrow gauge prototypes running on G1 track. There is or was a magazine something like 'Garden Rail' that specialised in it.

Gauge & Scale is a somewhat complicated area in the US (even more so than over here).

Many N/G railroads in the US were 3ft gauge, so when running on 45mm track, the correct scale is 1:20.3 also described as Fn3 by companies such as Accucraft. But there are (were) companies producing 1:24 (e.g. 1/2" ) scale products but the connection between scale and gauge was/is often very loose. In the US "G-Scale" and "G-Gauge" tend to get used to mean different things, the only commonality being the 45mm gauge.

In Europe, "G-Scale" generally means a scale of 1:22.5 on 45mm track – which is what LGB used to model their metre-gauge N/G railways. In Germany, the Spur II standards all use a scale of 1:22.5 but on four different gauges to represent Standard gauge ( Spur II – 64mm), Metre gauge (Spur IIm – 45mm ) and "Feldbahn" on 32mm and smaller gauges. Perhaps strangely, there was a small German manufacturer of US-prototype engines and stock called Magnus but I'm not sure if they were Gauge '3' or Spur II – the two being nearly the same but not identical (63.5mm vs 64mm track gauge and 1:22.6 vs 1:22.5 scale).

Regards,

IanT

Hi Brainsparks

As IanT states 1/2" to the foot scale was phased out in the 20's ish in the UK, but in the USA because of the larger prototypes 1/2" scale was stilln used untill the scale faded out in preference to the larger scales.

I don't believe there are any suppliers of 1/2" scale US outline drawings or castings available, a few years ago a company in the US was advertising castings and drawings for the Timken four aces loco in 2 1/2" gauge, I did try to contact them at the time but no response.

Drawings are available for the Baltimore & Ohio "President Washington" class P7 pacific from the 2 1/2" association, but no castings. These have not been available for many years, I have been told since the early thirties, I have the unfinished chassis of one I am working on at the moment. The design uses a great number of castings, even the coupling and connecting rods are nickel silver castings, one of the association members has recently completed a fully fabricated example.

On ebay a few years ago copies of 1/2" scale drawings for a NYC Hudson designed by Millar were being sold from the US, taken from the original 1930's drawings, unfortunately by the time I found out they were available the listings had disappeared.

My own loco pictured below ( I hope!) has passed through several hands by the look of it and needs considerable rectification work, it has the original cast gunmetal main frames, and many of the original cast parts, I hope to have it as a rolling chassis soon.

If you are interested in this sort of thing I can recommend the Friends models site, he is remanufacturing the 3 1/2" gauge President Washington castings, there's quite a lot on the US scene in the 30's. Worth joining the association, friendly, helpful bunch.

Dave

Dave

Hello from the usa,

This was just discussed in a recent post here

**LINK**

in the Live Steam forum under "1/2" scale drawings"

chaski.org/homemachinist