[munter]

It's funny but typing that lot has made me realise maybe it is a useful resource as long as you use it and not let it use you.

Agree

[Scuderia_Turini]

Of course, its really H0 (Half-Zero) isn't it?

Leo

[JasonB]

I always thought it stood for Half Ordinary, but but I wouldn't put money on that.

[woodcote]

"What is HO?" was a very common question in the early days of Worthing HO Racing... And the answer means at least touching on model railway nomenclature. Most commonly these days, HO refers to half of O scale or O gauge. In English-speaking countries we do say aitch-oh. In other countries, the local equivalent of half-zero (eg ha' null in German) would be traditional in model railways, but for slot cars it would depend on the degree of American influence on that HO slot car community.

However, it's far from straightforward if you dig deeper into model railway scales and gauges. In the original 1900 Märklin model railways gauges, it was 0, 1, 2 and 3 - so H0 or half-zero is also correct. But then it gets extremely convoluted in terms of historical development and agreed standards - and we'll leave that nonsense to the model railway buffs...

In any case, most HO cars are between 1:60 and 1:70 scale - and 1:64 scale is sometimes used alongside or instead of HO on modern-day packaging. Even the earliest Aurora HO cars were designed to run with OO gauge UK model railways, which at 1:76.2 are significantly larger than the standard 1:87.1 scale of American HO model railways... 

A better question might be "Why are these 1:64-ish scale cars still called HO?" - and the answer is a story for another time... Maybe a thread in itself? And when someone asks the question on social media a link to the thread does the job. That's how Facebook and forums can dovetail quite nicely... Unless that dastardly Facebook profanity algorithm deletes the question :-)

[Kevan]

Of course, its really H0 (Half-Zero) isn't it?

Leo

That's the correct scale, aitch zero not aitch oww

[JasonB]

I've always loved the "slippery road" sign, where the tyre tracks swap over. I also love a thread which meanders off into more interesting territory.

But I have a couple of questions.
First, my brain can't compute half zero. Mathematically half of zero is still zero?

Secondly, my understanding was that model railways usually worked on the gauge of the track, the width between the rails. Which of course means that several different scales could operate on a particular gauge. So a narrow gauge train at a larger scale could operate on the same track as a standard gauge train at a smaller scale?

It's a murky, and confusing world out there. But at least it's better than complaining about Facebook. 

[Johnno]

I like facebook and use it a lot.
You see many of the same experts there as you do here on the forums.
They are both slightly different forms of the same thing.

Biggest difference is these posts will still be here in 2033 whereas on FB you'll never find them again after today, that's why I hate it, noobs are constantly asking the same questions because there's no knowledge to read through.

Not just lack of scrolling and reading through that is lacking, it is a serious lack of knowing how to use the search funtion, let alone knowing hat this search even exists. 

It's just more socially lazy to jump on social media and ask the dumb question of what's the phone number for McDonalds when they could just as easily have googled that question... lazy much...

[Kevan]

Yep, I've come to the conclusion we've entered the 'whats Google' era.

[Henk]

There is nothing wrong with the concept of social media, it's the way it is implemented in a capitalistic world.

When a product is for free then you're the product. And who would pay, let's say $10 monthly, for the use of Facebook or Google? The costs of running these media are huge, so they need to make money from advertisements. Since they want you to click on the ads they started to build data lakes to create a more "personal" experience by storing a lot of data for each user. You can sent a request to Google to learn what they know about you, I'm sure you'll be flabbergasted.

I don't have any of these social media, used to have a LinkedIn account because I'm a freelance software developer. I stay far away from Google and Microsoft products and use alternatives like DuckDuckGo.

I would love to join the Facebook Slot community, I read there's a lot going on and many left the fora for it.

But giving away so much privacy for a hobby? That's a question everyone has to decide for himself. I made mine already, as you can guess 

[Kevan]

I would love to join the Facebook Slot community, I read there's a lot going on and many left the fora for it.

I ran an RC Drift forum between 2004 and 2014, it was #1 in Google searches for that hobbies keywords but quickly fell off the cliff when FB gained popularity. I kept it going for a couple of years but after closing up shop also closed my hosting account for good.
So it's great that there's a handful of top quality Slot car forums and they all cater for slightly different 'customers'