Hobby Trains

This section covers trains not found in the scales section page and from garden to commercial types and other areas.

• Live steam is steam under pressure, obtained by heating water in a boiler. The steam may be used to operate stationary or moving equipment. A live steam machine or device is one powered by steam, but the term is usually reserved for those that are replicas, scale models, toys, or otherwise used for heritage, museum, entertainment, or recreational purposes, to distinguish them from similar devices powered by electricity, internal combustion, or some other more convenient method but designed to look as if they are steam-powered.

• A ridable miniature railway (US: riding railroad or grand scale railroad) is a large scale, usually ground-level railway that hauls passengers using locomotives that are often models of full-sized railway locomotives (powered by diesel or petrol engines, live steam or electric motors). Overview Typically miniature railways have a rail track gauge between 5 in (127 mm) and under 15 in (381 mm), though both larger and smaller gauges are used.

• A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge narrower than 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1/2 in) standard gauge. Most narrow-gauge railways are between 600 mm (1 ft 11+5/8 in) and 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in).

• A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1/2 in). The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), international gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge and European gauge in Europe, and SGR in East Africa. It is the most widely used track gauge around the world, with about 55% of the lines in the world using it.

• A broad-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge (the distance between the rails) broader than the 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1/2 in) used by standard-gauge railways.

• Lego Trains (stylized as LEGO Trains) is a product range and theme of the construction toy Lego, which incorporates buildable train sets. The Lego Trains theme became a sub-theme of Lego City in 2006. Products in the range have included locomotives, tracks, rolling stock, stations, signal boxes, and other track-side buildings and accessories.