HOe scale

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HOe/HOn30

Egger-bahn Steam Tram
Scale per foot:	3.5 mm to 1 foot
Scale ratio:	1:87
Gauge:	9 mm
Prototype Gauge:	762 mm (2 ft 6 in)

HOe or HOn30 is a popular rail transport modelling scale/gauge combination widely used by modellers of European, American, and Japanese narrow gauge railways.

The term HOn30 (and sometimes HOn2½) is generally used when modelling American prototypes whilst H0e is used for European prototypes. Both terms refer to models of narrow gauge railways built to the world's most popular model railway scale of HO (1:87) but using a track gauge of 9 mm—the gauge used for N scale models of standard gauge railways.

The scale was invented by Egger-bahn in 1963^[1].

HOe is one of the gauge/scale combinations defined by NEM ^[2]. According to that standard, HOe represents narrow gauges between 650-850 mm though it's often used to represent 60cm gauge railways as well. In strict scale HOe represents a true gauge of 783 mm so is very close to the gauge of the 750 mm (2 ft 5½ in) and 760 mm (2 ft 5⅞ in) gauge railways most widely used in Germany and the former Austro-Hungarian empire as well as to the 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) gauge used in parts of the British Empire.

HOn30 is often used to model the 2 ft (610 mm) gauge railroads in the US state of Maine.^[3]

[edit] Related Scales

The other NEM defined narrow gauges for HO scale are HOm (using 12 mm gauge originally TT scale track) for models of metre gauge and similar prototypes and HOi (using Z scale 6.5 mm track) for prototypes around 60cm- the most popular gauge for industrial railways.

In the United Kingdom where the most popular railway modelling scale is 4 mm/ft or 1:76 scale, the narrow gauge equivalents to HOe and HOm are 009 and 00n3 for modelling 3 foot gauge railways—widely used in Ireland and the Isle of Man—on 12 mm gauge track.

The following table lists other combinations that are close to HOe/HOn3 in either scale or gauge;

Name	Scale	Gauge	Prototype gauge	Used
009	4 mm/foot	9 mm	2 ft 3 in (686 mm)	British Isles
00n12	4 mm/foot	12 mm	3 ft (914 mm)	British Isles
Sn2	4.8 mm/foot	9mm or 10.5 mm	2 ft (610 mm)	American
HOm	3.5 mm	12 mm	1,000 mm (3 ft 3⅜ in)	European