O Scale Model Trains

The O scale was introduced to allow manufacturers to build trains that took up less space than their standard counterparts and were less expensive for customers. In addition to Märklin, Lionel, MTH, Williams, Atlas, and Weaver, among others, have all offered O scale trains.

This smaller scale took off in the 1930s, when affordability trumped most other concerns thanks to the Depression. The scale also benefited from its full adoption by Lionel, which sold two different O gauges for its O scale trains. Lionel’s regular O gauge track was the same width as its O-27 gauge track (1 ¼ inch), but the O-27 had a lower profile than regular O, and its thinner rails allowed all but the longest O scale model trains to make tighter turns (a circle of O-27 tracks has a diameter of 27 inches instead of 31).

Having championed the O scale initially, Märklin gave its own creation some serious competition when it introduced the HO scale in 1935. World War II interrupted this new, even smaller scale’s ascendency, but by the 1950s, HO had taken off. The chief appeal was HO’s smaller size—now a complicated, richly detailed train set could be set up on a table instead of requiring an entire room.

But despite the appeal of HO, O scale has not gone away, especially among hobbyists who enjoy running realistic, detailed trains in elaborate layouts. They like the physical presence of O scale that HO scale trains, no matter how engaging their layouts, will never duplicate.

O scale also continues to be preferable to HO among modelers, in part because the scale is simply easier to work with, but also because the opportunities for realism on a larger train are greater. And fans of brass model trains are also frequently O scale acolytes because the earliest, most collectible brass trains made in postwar Japan were usually O scale.

Then there are the 2-rail, O scale enthusiasts, who have kept the torch burning for O scale by advocating the conversion of model trains designed to run on three-rail tracks (the middle track delivers power) to model trains that will run on just the outer two tracks. This often requires changing a train’s trucks (the framework for the axels and wheels) as well as a layout’s wiring (from AC to DC), but the lower profile that results makes an O scale model train look a lot less like a toy and more like the real thing in miniature.

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