1:64 Scale - Model and Toy Trains

Model and Toy Trains

From the late 1940s to the mid-1960s, 1:64 was a popular scale in the U.S. model railroad market, where it was called S scale or S gauge, however it still remains a popular scale, with a dedicated following. A.C. Gilbert, a major toy manufacturer, challenged the predominant O scale (1:48) manufacturers such as Lionel with a fully developed line of 1:64 scale and semi-scale equipment marketed under the American Flyer brand. Because they were 25% smaller than traditional O scale models, they ran on two-rail track that was more realistic than the traditional 3-rail O gauge track. These features would become standard characteristics of model trains in later years, when the even-smaller HO scale (1:87) took over the model train market from both the O and S scale trains. S-scale survives currently with a small number of manufacturers producing scale equipment for hobbyists and a large number of collectors who seek out the 1950s-era American Flyer equipment to run trains on nostalgic layouts.

Since the 1930s, O scale (1:48) train manufacturers, including Gilbert, Lionel and Marx, have produced bargain or introductory lines of undersized toy trains to run on O-gauge track with very tight curves, known as 0-27 track. Though sold as O gauge, the bodies of these undersized cars and engines were often scaled to 1:64 proportions. The origins of Gilbert's S-gauge equipment can be traced to its American Flyer O-27 line of 1938 and after.