TT Scale. The Ideal Scale.

Throw a scanner out a window? It is much more fun to burn things that fail to wok.

I was editor of TT EMPIRE during the time RailTech was going to save TT. Much was promised (TT scale Bettendorf trucks, an USRA 2-8-0 consolidation, etc.) but little was delivered. Actually, there were several other folks, I recall, that were going to do "thus and such" for TT, but nothing of any value came TT's way except for Larry Sayre, John Harmon, Elmer McKay, and a couple of others who continued to offer "new old" stock, and in Elmer's case, some drive units for Lionel sponsored "TT" locomotives that came along about that time. I know that Elmer had a hard time getting parts for his drives. But, TT has soldiered on. What really p----s me off is that TT seems to have been "dropped" as a model rail scale by all the major model railroad magazine publishers (thinking of Kalmbach and Carstens) when from time to time charts for scale conversions, etc. are published. Always, it's O,S,HO,N,Z, but TT is never included.

Kalmbach dropped it by 1970/71, and even before it was VERY rare to see anything TT in MR; Carstens/RMC was much more positive, what with a fairly regular TT column in the 50s and 60s, etc.

MR now I don't think will care about any new development in TT - it's become just one big flyer.

RMC on the other hand... if you present Bill Schaumburg with something good, I think he'll go for it. We had a good conversation when he was here for the November show, he's always been interested in latest developments in the scale. He might even run a thing on the New Items page when/if the RTR SW come to pass.

I do not know a lot about the American model magazines, but I think they need something NEW.
If we inform them about really new interesting layout or RTR model, I hope at least one of them will publish something.

forget MR. i gave up on it 20 years ago when i knew far less about american locos. they did what was described as a detailed plan of a GP18 that was wrong in so many ways i gave up counting. i quickly realised they did not know much about the history of particular railroads either and covered this with a combination of woolly descriptions and personal attacks re rivet counting, if challenged. i saw a similar approach from microtrains when they produced their 'fat' GP9 in Z scale and the inaccuracies were noted. in like mind, they took a nosedive in my estimation thereafter.

as an aside, MR reviewed their Z GP35 - which had a phatt hood like the old athearn HO geeps - as 'measuring up in every way.' uh-huh.

to my mind MR's stocks are so low it would likely be refused entry to a garbage compactor.

TTTerrific wrote:What really p----s me off is that TT seems to have been "dropped" as a model rail scale by all the major model railroad magazine publishers (thinking of Kalmbach and Carstens) when from time to time charts for scale conversions, etc. are published. Always, it's O,S,HO,N,Z, but TT is never included.

I wouldn't worry about it. Things are going in a very good direction right now. If we keep the momentum going the next several years should be great.

It's actually better that there isn't much coverage right now - people want everything yesterday and I'm sure many would give up if models aren't available immediately.

Plus it gives us/someone a chance to do their own (electronic?) publication specifically about TT - sorry but TT Empire is underwhelming at best. It's a new age of info and massive printing ability is no longer needed - the big publishers will be irrelevant in a few years.

ConducTTor wrote:.....the big publishers will be irrelevant in a few years.

Some of them already are. A topic on the Trains.com message board has kept bringing up how soon they will shift some subscribers to an e-book format.