Dave Swanson: Hi! I am Dave Swanson with the World's Greatest Hobby Program. And today we are helping you get started in model railroading. In this clip, we are going to look at the various sizes, or scales of model railroading.

Now, there are two terms you are going to hear used somewhat interchangeably: Scale and Gauge. Scale is actually the size of the model train. Is that one-tenth of size of a real train, is it one-hundredth of size of a real train. Gauge refers to the distance between the rails and the track. But largest scale is G Scale. That's about one twenty-secondth the size of a real train, and it's frequently used outdoors and in gardens. The next biggest scale is O Scale. That's about one-fiftieth the size of a real train, and it has been one of the more popular scales for a long time in history. The most popular scale today is HO and it's about one eighty-seventh the size of a real train. And that makes our local model of about six inches long.

The last scale and the smallest is N scale, that's about one-sixtieth the size of a real train and it allows you to put an off a lot of model railroading in our very small space. Now, that we have overviewed the four scales, we are going to look at them each individually to see what the advantages and disadvantages are, of each of the individual scales.