@bigdawgks Thanks for that information! Your observations are pretty much the same as what I found several years
So @peteski Peter, I vote that early N-scale designers "...pulled the dimensions out of a hat." I came to that conclusion a long time ago when I got bombed by various posters about my claim that early N-gauge (not N-scale) Code80 track, and all Code80 track that followed were designed as toys, and not as models.
Maybe the manufacturers still think of N scale as a "toy-train" scale. At least it seems like that. But I think there might be another reason. I think that the manufacturers keep on making the "toy track" because they are afraid that since properly scaled track would not visually match the track that has been available since the development of N scale, modelers would not buy it. Atlas finally decoded to produce more prototypical track, but they still make the toy track. Railcraft was a specialty manufacturer catering to scale modelers, so then never made toy track.
While not a very good comparison, maybe something like when MTL took forever to get rid of the pizza-cutter wheels on their models. When they finally cave under the pressure, for a while they installed low-profile wheels in their models, but also they included a set of loose pizza-cutter wheels in the box. It took some time for them to stop doing that and just use the low-profile wheels. Might be similar with non-prototypical track.
Now, if some manufacturer would simply go outside with a tape measure, a camera and a notebook and look at real track, or spend 30 minutes looking for real track drawings online...maybe they'd be able to produce "model" N-scale track instead of just continuing to perpetuate fugly toy N-gauge track.
The funny thing is that manufacturers (like Peco) know the correct track dimensions, and are actually producing it in H0 scale. If they wanted to, they could just as easily make it in N scale. They must have their reasons not to (which sucks for us).
