Robin,
Yes, these were the very first products I sold, albeit initially for 16.5mm gauge, back in the early 1980s. Alan Gibson approached me with regards die-sinking wheel tools for him, and subsequently sent me blank centre buttons for his wheel moulding bolsters for pantographing. They were for new 4mm scale wheels in 12, 10.5 and 9mm diameters, so I machined three extra buttons - with 7mm scale NG ‘curly spokes’ which Alan kindly moulded for me and supplied them with blackened steel tyres, ready mounted on pin-point axles. He also sold me the blister packs and top-hat brass bearings. Header cards were printed locally and away I went. Well worth keeping ‘as is’ - a piece of NG modelling history . . .
Roy
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Thanks very much Roy,
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While I think I knew most of this I didn’t feel qualified to write it down as I was bound to get it wrong.?
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I think I still have a pack of your original curly spoke wheels in the yellow card and plastic bubble packaging.? I found them the other day but for nostalgic reasons I am reluctant to open them. ?
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Regards,
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Robin
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To clarify the background behind the O14 standards - they are derived from data published by the British Railway Modelling Standards Bureau (BRMSB) in 1950.
At the time, there were two standards for 18mm gauge in 4mm scale - EM and EMF. I used the dimensions for the then EM standard, the reason being, that my friend Alan Gibson had chosen the 1950 EM wheel profile for his ‘finescale OO’ range of wheels for use with 0.16.5mm gauge. At the time, I used to make wheel centre injection tooling for Alan and, once he started putting together a range of wheels for TT scale, I realised I could create a range of my own, for O14. To allow for ‘protothree’ (14.2mm gauge), as well as the standard 12mm, the axles were thus suitable for O14 - and the wheel tyres were the BRMSB ‘EM’ profile noted above. I used to go ‘halves’ with Alan on runs of the 3mm scale axles. To keep the price within reason, this often amounted to bags of 20,000 axles being delivered.
With these wheels and axles, it was obvious that a practical set of standards were to be had, by modifying the BRMSB EM dimensions by extracting 4mm from the gauge, back to back and other relevant measures - though those for flangeways of course, remained the same. First published in NG&IRM REVIEW in June 1993, some small corrections were made in the light of practical experience in 1994.?
Fortuitously, the BRMSB EM profile (in 7mm scale) compares well with the profiles published in Vignes Atlas, for the Festiniog Railway, being a little larger than that for wagons/coaches, but a little smaller than locomotives. With regards the wheels fitted to Hudson skips etc., they are fractionally oversize in all respects apart from tread width, where they are a little narrow. The alternative though, would have meant custom machined wheel tyres, an expense I could not afford. By ‘piggy-backing’ on an established (and emerging) range of wheels and axles, costs were kept down and the commercial success of O14 was established.
