gauge

Isambard Kingdom Brunel stands with the greatest engineers of the industrial revolution. He remains a source of constant inspiration to me in my endeavors as a LEGO craftsman. I reject conventional wisdom about the suitability of ABS blocks for steamship hulls, railway lines, or tunnels under navigable rivers.

Modern life is littered with a thousand minor units and constants with surnames borrowed from small minds. Did Edgar Pi contribute that much? Was Alessandro Volta half the engineer that Brunel was? No.

Where is the Isambard? The Brunel? Kingdom does find some minor use as a unit in some faiths to denominate a single collective afterlife (ex: a kingdom of heaven) though this usage appears to predate Brunel's birth by several of George Millenium's finest.

An obvious remedy is to replace the meter in everyday usage with the brunel -- set at 2140mm. Most people are between zero and one brunel tall. This amazing LEGO model of Serenity is just about one brunel long. That's handy.

The best use of the brunel is probably to describe more than a thousand miles of broad gauge trackage operated by the Great Western Railway in the 19th century. That track was 1 brunel between the rails. Returning to Serenity for a moment, we note that the first locomotives designed by Daniel Gooch for the GWR were the 'Fire Fly' class.

I have been running a Gauge Commission of one at home to try to find a single style of track most suitable for my small children of two and four and their childish father. I simply cannot accomodate a full brunel gauge. We have three gauges in service at present.

The narrowest gauge is one Brio (about 20mm). We acquired a great deal of track in this gauge from IKEA. This gauge allows a tight turning radius with unarticulated cars. On the downside, so little room is available between the locomotive frames for a boiler that these trains are very slow to build steam. Most are pushed. The track itself is joined with male and female connectors. For this reason, prospective rail plans must be surveyed carefully for topology as well as grade. turnarounds are not possible without special adapters. I also find these lines to be especially susceptible to sabotage by toddlers. I would like to relegate this gauge to mule drawn mine carts.

We also have a lot of track in the proprietary DUPLO gauge (about 27mm). Like BRIO track, this track has two concave wells in which narrow road wheels ride. The wheels on typical DUPLO rolling stock are dressed with a flange. In many layouts, the flange is cosmetic only. DUPLO locomotives feature teeth in the flange relief. These teeth engage with matching teeth in a special DUPLO bridge. Powered trains can transition into cog operation nearly as seamlessly as the hybrid rack/adhesion system on the Lyon Metro Line C.

The DUPLO track is genderless and very easy for small hands to assemble without force. Typical DUPLO rolling stock is connected with post and clip fasteners that appear to typify European willful ignorance of the Janney coupler even in scale roads.

Our third gauge is the 'L' gauge used by LEGO in their trains since the 1960s. This track has been offered together with trains of several forms over the decades. Some were powered-rail systems. Some were unpowered rails designed for use with push trains. Others were unpowered and intended for use with a variety of battery-powered trains. L gauge trains have flanged road wheels. Rolling stock often have articulated trucks. The track is unisex. The rolling stock is typically built up from LEGO brick. Specialized coupler pieces are available and the most modern of these use a genderless magnetic coupler. This coupler is much nicer than the BRIO-style magnetic stud coupler.

By nearly any technical measure, the L gauge and system are the obvious choice. It is not an obvious choice for small hands, though. My children can get trains together and trains on rails, but the rails themselves are very difficult to lock together. My four year old cannot do it. For the interim, we have now adopted some LEGO rolling stock on a DUPLO road.

Most DUPLO wagons start with a base that combines couplers, axles, and a flat bed. The superintendent of locomotives at LEGO HQ worked with the early childhood education staff here at the Center for Victorian Studies to build a line of trains to teach children to stay on the rails of life and within their ticketed class. The resulting 'Thomas' locomotives all feature a small tender. This tender rides on a wagon (part 4195cXX) that is just small enough to be a truck under an L scale LEGO wagon. These parts are available from Bricklink for a few bucks each.

DUPLO road with mixed rolling stock
Photo courtesy your correspondent

This is our mode for the moment. The Great Western Railway completed the changeover from broad gauge to standard gauge in a weekend. I'm confident that I could pull off the same when LEGO track becomes the right answer.