List of narrow-gauge model railway scales

At times, particularly in the early days before the inertia of popular scales developed, modellers would choose seemingly random scales in order to model a particular prototype and its original gauge whilst using a readily available gauge.

[3] As the range of commercial products increases, both for gauges and scales, it is easier to find a combination that is already supported and so there is less need to scratch-build everything.

Some, such as G gauge and SM32 were defined from the outset as narrow-gauge scales and so have a single component to their name.

This may be because of Europe's greater prototypical use of the larger narrow gauges for smaller branch lines.

NEM010 defines and names narrow gauges for all the supported scales although it takes a broad approach and groups the prototypes into 'nominal size' ranges or Nenngröße.