...as well as those here who are interested in such things:

First, an explanation of things on this side of the puddle for Fred:

I build models in 0 scale, which is 1/48. The equivalent in the UK is 7mm; the same track gauge but slightly different scale.

That said, there is also a large toy-train following in the US, a large driver the nostalgia for the childhood years of the 1950s and '60s. One must remember those early post-WWII years were very good years for the Yanks and rather tough ones for pretty much everyone else. With that in mind, one can understand when I say how intense the nostalgia for those decades is for Americans and how strong the toy hobby following was and still is here, nothing remotely like it in the UK or elsewhere.

The end result is, while 0 is pretty well defined as a modelling scale in the UK, it is overshadowed in the US by a much larger "coarse" following, everything from collecting toy trains to some rather disconcerting modern made combinations of coarse track and wheels with semi-scale features "above the water line".

Mike and Paul know I tend far more towards the scale model side of things rather than the toy train side, although I do keep a modest collection of true toy trains, my old Hornby, Lionel from that period, that sort of thing. Most of it has family history, my uncle, a couple bits from my dad and Herself's family, again cracked out when my son was young.

Back to today, scale modelling in this scale in America is a bit of a challenge, far more of one than UK 0 is (I've enjoyed both). Some of us have taken to converting some of the coarse-scale offerings out of necessity if nothing else. It's not easy work, changing the underpinnings from the gross more-than-compromised wheels &c to a scale model, but once lowered a few scale feet, fine-scale wheelsets, couplings, &c applied, you get this sort of appearance:



In some cases, it actually takes machine-tools to do. A milling machine and end-mills clear off the out-of-scale coupling pads, the bolsters carved down, then hand-fitting the scale bits:





The effect is this:


The vast majority of what is made isn't worth it, simply too compromised to save. The stuff that is worthwhile can still be very time-consuming to do, but dam satisfying in its effect.