Origin of "16# Gauge"

[Nick_Burman]

Hello,

 

Long time no post... does anyone know the exact origin of "16# Gauge" (1:80, 16.5mm)? I read somewhere that it was the brainchild of a TMS (Tetsudo Mokei Shumi, "Hobby of Model Railroading" magazine) editor who devised the scale/gauge combinantion as a way of using Marklin mechs (which at some time were very abundant in Japan) under Japanese models. Does that story tally?

 

Cheers Nicholas

[bikkuri bahn]

That may be one origin story, but the one I have heard often is that the 1/80 figure was a visual compromise, as 1/87 would make the HO scale track (16mm gauge) comically too large proportionally to the car bodies, when modelling prototypes that ran on 1067mm gauge track and their corresponding loading gauge.