History

The Märklin brothers were the first to offer a complete system of toy train track sections with turnouts, crossovers and curved sections. They showed a figure-of-8 layout at the 1891 Leipzig Spring Fair, and their idea for standardised gauges was quickly taken up by other manufacturers. By 1895, Gauge I was the smallest of the original Märklin gauges along with its near-neighbour Gauge II at 2 inches. A few years later, Gauge Zero (or O-gauge) was added at 1¼ inches.

A Gauge 1 locomotive is five times longer than its N-gauge equivalent, and 625 times larger by volume. This makes for impressive models but also requires a lot of space - minimum radius curves of around 3 metres are typical for realistic looking operation. Between the wars, interest in these larger models running on implausibly tight curves waned as accurate scale models in smaller scales became available: it simply was not practical to accommodate realistic scenic layouts in most homes, although there were some surviving Gauge 1 garden tracks.

In Spring 1947 a small group of enthusiasts came together to keep the spirit of Gauge 1 alive, and the first edition of the G1MRA journal was published the following April. Since then we have grown to an international association with around 2,000 members in over twenty countries.