WESA - another model RR
And here is still another one which even doesn't have an abbreviation - it only uses the name of the (single) firm which produced it:
WESA was a Swiss model railroad, produced 1945-1964. They started with a scale of 1:110 (heaven knows why!
), so the track gauge was 13 mm, 1/110 of the standard gauge 1435 mm.
About 1950 the manufacturers had the idea to replace the odd modeling scales of 1:87, 1:76, 1:45 (European O scale!!) and the original WESA 1:110 by the easy-to-calculate scale of 1:100. This worked for a while, and lots of Swiss boys were proud to have a WESA at home. (I was one of them
)
But then came TT and after that N scale - and WESA slowly fizzled out. Today I'd say that their marketing was bad. They made a mix of models without a clear line. Of course there were models of Swiss prototype rolling stock, but then they added ONE German steam engine (a 0-6-0 switcher), ONE French loco (the world speed record holder) ut without French cars, ONE Belgian freight car, and - would you believe it!!! - a complete UNION PACIFIC domeliner train with a gas turbine loco at the point. (Look at the pic below!
)
In the '60s the plant switched to injection molding of small precision machine parts and dropped the model RR line. However, some fans bought up the tools and soldiered on, manufacturing the same WESA models over and over - perhaps with some repaints. I think, this went on, up to this day! They even re-issued the domeliner train in Amtrak colors - yeeeeccchh!
Ron
The models in the pic below are part of the probably complete collection of a Swiss WESA lover.
