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Standard Gauge, also known as wide gauge, was an early model railway and toy train rail gauge, introduced in the United States in 1906 by Lionel Corporation. [1] As it was a toy standard, rather than a scale modeling standard, the actual scale of Standard Gauge locomotives and rolling stock varied.
Strictly speaking, scale is the ratio of the size of a model to that of its prototype and gauge is the distance between the track railheads. In the case of S scale, the proportion is 1:64 or 3 ⁄ 16 inch modeling 1 foot. Standard S gauge track has a spacing of 7 ⁄ 8 inch (22 mm). Three-foot gauge in S scale (Sn3 gauge) is 14.28 mm (0.562 in).
Many diesel, electric, and steam engines made after 1950 had Lionel's Magne-Traction, which made the wheels magnetic in order to grip the track better. Lionel's most popular toy train ever mass-produced was the Santa Fe F3, numbered 2333, released in 1948. By 1953, Lionel sales reached their highest level at over $32 million.
In 2008, Lionel released an American Flyer Big Boy with TMCC and Railsounds. The license to manufacture the track had been held by Maury Klein, whose K-Line brand of 0 gauge trains competed against Lionel in the toy train renaissance of the 1980s and ’90s and into the 21st. century.
Lionel continued the Ives practice of issuing low-end train sets that ran on a circle of O-gauge track with a 27-inch diameter, and Lionel incorporated some Ives-designed freight cars into its product line. The Lionel 1680 tanker car, for instance, was an Ives design that remained in Lionel's catalogs right up to the start of World War II.
OO gauge was quickly eclipsed by the better-proportioned HO scale. The Lionel range of OO used 19 mm (3 ⁄ 4 inch) track gauge, equating to 57 inches or 4 ft 9 in – very close to the 4 ft 8 1 ⁄ 2 in of standard gauge. There is a small following of American OO scale today.
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