Back a few months ago I posted a reaction to a misstatement in an article in a recent issue of RMC. (That article is here). Basically, there is a common misconception today that American OO must be like the British OO, HO gauge but OO scale bodies. This idea was repeated in a sidebar related to a reprint of an article on building a hopper car from the November 1936 issue of The Model Craftsman. I also submitted a version of my post as a letter to the editor, clarifying what American OO was, etc.

Fast forward to the most recent issue (June 2022), there is nice short letter to the editor published from Keith Wills about the 1936 Hansbury hopper article, but in it he makes no reference to the gauge/scale issue. And my letter apparently did not make the cut, although maybe next month, who knows.

Wills does state though that “HO’s popularity after World War Two saw the quick decline of OO in America, except for a few holdouts.” This is correct. There were OOldtimers that were very invested in the scale and kept it going, even to the extent that I work almost exclusively in American OO now, with a working layout, etc.

In any case, that prompted me to update the header text in the site a bit more. I don’t know how much more clear I can make it to anyone who happens to surf by.

One other little note for regular readers, Google has managed almost a year into this site being here to index about half of the site. Maybe by next year it will be very visible to anyone out there that is looking at American OO and what it is relative to British OO.