Large Scale Central

Building a building to scale with only a picture?

General Discussion
#1

I’m a newbie, so if this is a dumb question I apologize. I was blessed to meet the great great grand daughter of the man who built our house in 1887. We are about to start our first garden railroad. One of the things that this woman gave us was a picture of the house as it was back then. Somethings have changed and we wanted to build a model of the house as it was back then. Is there a way to get the scale right based on just a picture?

Most measurements are the same, but a few areas of the house were altered and so I don’t have anything to go by for measurements.

#2

Measure a known feature in the picture and compare that to a known feature on your house. The rest is just simple proportions.

#3

You can usually take a measurement from a window or door, those don’t change. Then, if the window is three feet high in real life, but only a half inch in the photo, you can then determine the scale of the photo. Use that scale to determine the other measurements. Some you will have to guess at, but at least it will be an educated guess.

#4

Thanks great suggestions. Now off to work I go.

#5

Pics, we want pics!

#6

Richard, you might also want to go to your local library or book store and research in the Architectural sections. Most photographs are not taken straight on and are in ‘Perspective View’. There are books that explain how to ‘draw’ a perspective view of something. Using the how to draw the view will also allow you to ‘reverse engineer’ the view from the finished view you have to obtain good dimensions of what you don’t.

Sounds like an interesting build, will be watching.

Bob C.

#7

Richard Nichols said:

Thanks great suggestions. Now off to work I go.

Richard,

One thing that most likely hasn’t changed is the foundation. Depending on the perspective of the picture - most people try to show more than just one elevation - that’s a good start. Scan and print out the picture on a sheet of paper (if necessary glue the scan to a larger piece of paper) that will allow you to draw the perspective lines and establish the exact ratio at any point of the picture. The rest is just calculations. BTW most dwellings of that vintage followed a certain symmetry and unless the house underwent major rebuilding that symmetry should still be there.
Have fun.

PS how about posting that picture?

#8

If the picture is flat on, its easy. If the picture is at an angle then it gets a bit more difficult. But since you have the house, you can take measurements of the house and add the missing details where they belong.

I took a picture of a house I wanted to build, and printed it out to scale. Since door openings tend to be about 7 feet high, I knew I wanted the door to be 3.5 inches high when I printed it out. So I just had to adjust the ratio when I printed it.

#9

David Maynard said:

If the picture is flat on, its easy. If the picture is at an angle then it gets a bit more difficult. But since you have the house, you can take measurements of the house and add the missing details where they belong.

I took a picture of a house I wanted to build, and printed it out to scale. Since door openings tend to be about 7 feet high, I knew I wanted the door to be 3.5 inches high when I printed it out. So I just had to adjust the ratio when I printed it.

I have a copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements and it allows you to ‘transform’ a picture from a perspective view to (e.g.) a flat view. It sometimes helps with dimensions.

If you can take a decent digital photo of your old photo, I’d be happy to ‘transform’ it for you. 9And post it here as well for the guys to see.)

#10

Wow! A house in the LA area built in 1887? That’s ancient. And like the guys said, “Pictures, we want pictures.” Everything they said applies. Basically, if you know one dimension (window size or door height, which is usually 7 feet) you can extrapolate (is that the right word?) and figure out the rest. When I used that picture of an old water mill in my post (Size: does it matter?), I loaded the photo I got off the web into Adobe Lightroom (but there are others programs) and kept enlarging it (by cropping it) until a window was exactly the same size as one of my Grandt Line model windows. I kept that size in Lightroom and printed photos of the rest of the wall until I could paste together an entire image, which I did, to come up with a paper “model” of the entire mill wall.

Although the guys didn’t mention it, a scale ruler helps, because once you measure the window you can get the dimensions of everything else. Since you live in the area, “The Original Whistle Stop” on Colorado Blvd in Pasadena has a good selection. For the dumbest of reasons I work in 1:22.5, which is (original) Bachmann and LGB scale, but there are rulers in virtually every scale–sold on line for sure, if you don’t want to drive ALL the way to Pasadena to visit one of the best brick and mortar model train stores in the country.

I just re-read David’s comments and that works too. But I still like my scale rulers.

BTW, are you coming down to Anaheim next weekend to the only model train show around for a while? Not a lot of large scale, but everything else including On30, which is where I shoulda gone if I had any brains (I don’t). :slight_smile:

#11

Pete Thornton said:

David Maynard said:

If the picture is flat on, its easy. If the picture is at an angle then it gets a bit more difficult. But since you have the house, you can take measurements of the house and add the missing details where they belong.

I took a picture of a house I wanted to build, and printed it out to scale. Since door openings tend to be about 7 feet high, I knew I wanted the door to be 3.5 inches high when I printed it out. So I just had to adjust the ratio when I printed it.

I have a copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements and it allows you to ‘transform’ a picture from a perspective view to (e.g.) a flat view. It sometimes helps with dimensions.

If you can take a decent digital photo of your old photo, I’d be happy to ‘transform’ it for you. 9And post it here as well for the guys to see.)

I didn’t know Photoshop elements would do that. I use the program to adjust and fix a lot of things, I will have to try adjusting the perspective sometime. I did have a free drafting program that would adjust perspective, but somewhere along the way I lost the program.

#12

There’s building to scale, and then there is creating a building that looks about right. While you seldom want to model the exact dimensions, in your case I would think you want to avoid any selective compression, which is what I normally use.

I found this picture over at Shorpy.com and wanted to make an approximate model of it. I assumed about 5’6" for the figure and based my calculations for height and width on that.

But, at the same time, I decided to scale it down just a bit as I don’t need giant buildings on my layout.

To me, the final result looks about right, even though it is smaller than the prototype.

For old homes, you probably want to allow at LEAST 12’ for each floor. That will end up giving you a pretty good guide, though unless you allow for depth of floor/ceiling, you many end up a bit smaller than the prototype.

If you’re not planning on scratch built windows, you may have to modify your plan a bit to accommodate the available windows.

Sounds like a fun project - keep us posted with pictures.

#13

Welcome Richard

Being a historic homeowner myself I too would love to see the picture you were given. I built a model of my home a few years ago. However I have to disagree with the comment made on the 84" door height. I highly doubt a home that age being built in the Victorian era had a 7’ entrance door.

#14

I would have to see a picture of the front of the house to judge, but some Victorian homes may have had a taller door, especially if there are 12 foot ceilings.

The central room of our home dates back to 1705 with a little bit more than 6 and a half foot ceilings and a 76" front door which was added in the 1980’s.

I too would like to see a picture. The advice is free.

#15

Rooster, I did say that door openings “tend” to be “about” 7 feet high. Some older homes and building have taller doors. And then the doors may be 7 feet, but then there may be a transom above the door too.

The old farm house we used to live in had high ceilings. I never did measure them to see how high they were.So 10 feet per floor/story doesn’t hold as true with older buildings as it may with newer buildings.

I have tried selectively compressing buildings in the past. Some people are reel good at compressing a building and not loosing its character. I am not. I tend to end up with a caricature of the building.

#16

I say figure out the dimensions of the house you want to model and figure how it will fit on your layout because you don’t want to over build. Like others have suggested I think you might have to use selective compression to make it work.
Take the important architectual aspects of the house and incorporate those into your model to catch the overall feel.
Do Keep us posted.

#17

Joe Rusz said:

Wow! A house in the LA area built in 1887? That’s ancient.

I just had to laff there, Joe.

The bridge in our village was built in 1160AD.

The parish church has part of the original Anglo-Saxon chapel - around 950AD - still in place down one side. The most ‘recent renovations’ to the spire were carried out in 1486AD…

Our local township got its royal charter to hold a weekly market in 1206 AD, and the bridge over to the other town, built in 1190AD, leads to the place where the first market was held in 1103AD.

Ancient. riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

tac
Ottawa Valley GRS

#18

tac Foley said:

Joe Rusz said:

Wow! A house in the LA area built in 1887? That’s ancient.

I just had to laff there, Joe.

The bridge in our village was built in 1160AD.

The parish church has part of the original Anglo-Saxon chapel - around 950AD - still in place down one side. The most ‘recent renovations’ to the spire were carried out in 1486AD…

Our local township got its royal charter to hold a weekly market in 1206 AD, and the bridge over to the other town, built in 1190AD, leads to the place where the first market was held in 1103AD.

Ancient. riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

tac
Ottawa Valley GRS

Must be Old World humor…

#19

tac Foley said:

Joe Rusz said:

Wow! A house in the LA area built in 1887? That’s ancient.

I just had to laff there, Joe.

The bridge in our village was built in 1160AD.

The parish church has part of the original Anglo-Saxon chapel - around 950AD - still in place down one side. The most ‘recent renovations’ to the spire were carried out in 1486AD…

Our local township got its royal charter to hold a weekly market in 1206 AD, and the bridge over to the other town, built in 1190AD, leads to the place where the first market was held in 1103AD.

Ancient. riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

tac
Ottawa Valley GRS

It’s all relative. For LA, 1887 IS ancient, practically antidiluvian.

#20

That’s what it is, Old World humour.

BTW much of the old stuff all over Europe - stuff that the many wars didn’t modify - gets designated as historical. Which at times leads to peculiar situations e.g. the exterior is preserved the way it has been for many, many years, but the interior gets modernized to today’s standards.