I love to say I’ve never met a scale I didn’t like. I play in 1:220 (Z), 1:160 (N), 1:87 (HO), 1:64 (S), 1:48 (O), 1:32 (#1), 1:29 (A), 1:24 (H), 1:22.5 (G) and 1:20.3 (F). As the editor of an all-scales publication, I feel I owe it to you and myself to try to stay in touch to at least a limited extent with all of them. Every one of them is fun and worthy, and all of them have their adherents, manufacturers, and marketplace.

MRN is the last remaining all-scales publication in the hobby right now. Most of the others have gone to either one scale or a scale range for a very easy-to-understand reason. It’s easier to just deal with one scale or just all the large scales or just all the table scales or whatever. In an age of specialization, a magazine can choose to pick a gauge specialty and stay there.

I can’t begin to tell you what is involved in trying to reach out to ten or more different scales on a consistent basis. We know that HO-scale manufacturers produce more new products to review than all the other scales combined. There are also more HO scalers out there, and the largest segment of our readership is HO modelers, to no one’s great surprise.

The thing I find interesting is the eclectic interests of these folks. First, they like to read the doings in other scales, which they won’t do if all they have is an HO publication. Second, many folks who model in HO eventually take up modeling in other scales. I like to model in N because I can get more track action in the same space. On the other hand, I like garden railroading because that’s a focal point in my backyard and scratches a whole other itch. While my wife thinks the little trains are cute, she only gets involved with the garden stuff. When I talk with other guys, it’s amazing how much I’m not at all unique. Several of my friends have garden layouts and also some HO stuff in the garage.

I’ve seen Allen Keller videos of layouts where a modeler uses N scale in the background of an HO layout to make it look like that’s another train, only a lot farther away. It’s known as “forcing perspective” and it works. When it’s done well, it is eerily effective. I also saw an Fn3 garden layout where it passed through a little town and in the backyard of a house was a garden layout using Z-scale trains! That little layout was actually a 1:10.8 scale layout on the 1:20.3 scale layout. Okay!

When I visited the California Museum of Transportation in Sacramento, CA (a pilgrimage I heartily endorse for anyone who can get there), I saw a visiting Large Scale layout that included a mine with ore cars running on HO-scale track. Everything on this layout was done wonderfully and often with great whimsy, and this looked like the light gauge rail used in primitive mines with small, hand-pushed cars.

I’m proud to say that with the help of Bachmann and Aristo-Craft, we’ll be having Large Scale reviews appearing regularly in our pages for several months to come. Both companies are releasing Large Scale products, though they are not actually competitors. Let me explain.

Aristo-Craft turns out products in 1:29 (A) scale. While the track doesn’t come out as a true reduction of standard gauge track, its 51-inch scale is close enough that its popularity has vaulted it to the center of the standard gauge segment of the Large Scale world. Together with USA Trains, Aristo-Craft has helped to build a marketplace for A scale’s modern mainline trains..

Aristo-Craft is scheduled to get us our first live steam review, their new GP40 locomotive, the new double door boxcar, and a wealth of new developments in everything from track to command control devices. Lewis Polk never sits still for very long, and if you know him, this doesn’t surprise you.

Meanwhile, at 1:20.3 (F) scale, we really have what should be known as Fn3 because it represents perfectly three-foot narrow gauge. Bachmann is blossoming out in Fn3 with their freight cars and a new K-27, all scheduled to show up here for review in our pages. More than that, the Fn3 scale is going to be in the spotlight to see what else we can do with it. It’s another scale, so I like it!

With all this Large Scale cornucopia going on, that doesn’t mean Dave Otte has lifted the dead man’s pedal on O gauge for a second. The king of scales is still represent by Atlas, Lionel, and MTH, and Bachmann now owns Williams, so we expect new things to write about there. We’ll also be digging for stories out of S scale between Dave and Roy Hoffman.

I get to do a certain amount of HO-scale stuff, but I have to share that load with capable writers like Mike Acker, Dave Carr, and several others. Phil Scandura leads another pack of writers dealing with N scale, and they’re covering that waterfront very nicely. We’re going to add TAMR writer Steven Goehring to that mix.

Several of us like to play with Z, but the Zenith of that group is our vehicle editor, Bill Cawthon. He’s shown a certain zest for it, you might say! Bill has also added a scale zing to cars and other vehicles, something that’s helped the modeling world immensely.

I think perhaps the most fun part of scales is that when model makers adhere to them, you can compare two models and visually learn things about them. You come to realize that this one is longer than that one or taller or whatever. Someone in the second story window of a house would be about the same level as the engineer in his cab. It takes a whole scale to teach us about the majesty of trains. No matter the scale, I think that’s the real fun. — John Sipple