goutal (01/16/83)
It's been a long time since I fooled with these, but this is how I remember it... "O" is, as has been explained, the basic Lionel guage. I believe it has already been adequately described, except to say that it had (has?) relatively low ties, of rather light-guage metal. 027 was, as also explained, a pin-compatible variant, but with a different radius on the curved sections. There was another, as yet unmentioned, called 072, also a pin-compatible radius variant. Then there was Super-O, the last (to my knowledge) of the "O" family of scales. Note how I kept saying "pin" compatible, and said nothing about the compatibility of Super-O. One way in which the radius variants were NOT compatible with each other or with the standard "O" track is that cars longer than a certain length couldn't hack the tighter radii. Passenger cars typically had this problem, as did some of the snazzier box cars and gondolas. Super-O, on the other hand, had serious incompatibilities... For one thing, the middle (!) rail was not tubular like the others, but a thin strip of brass; electrical connection was made with similarly thin little clips that went over the joints. I believe the outer rails were not *round* like the other members of the family, but squarish, so there had to be special adaptor pins. Also, I think the center rail had an odd vertical relationship with the outside rails, different from the other variants; in any event, while the more modern (circa 50's) equipment would run equally well on all four variants, our family had one old four-car tinplate passenger train (30's or 40's I believe) that *would not run* on the Super-O stuff! Never did figure out why. Oh, yes, Super-O track was not as high overall as 072 and 027, but was the same height (I think) as regular "O". By the way, for those of you who didn't know, the "O" family is a *three-rail* system! I think it made reversing loops easier, electrically, but that's about the only advantage I can remember. Finally, most "O" family track, except Super-O, had three 'ties' per track setion of a foot or so. Super-O was more like HO and most others in having ties in relatively accurate scale representation, i.e. two or three dozen per foot. "S" guage had four per section. -- Kenn (decvax!)goutal