I’ve been building the In-ko-pah Railroad in 1/24th scale for over 11 years now, and it’s time for a change. I like the level of detail and realism that can be achieved in Large Scale, but it’s still too small. I thought about switching to 1/20.3 scale but that’s only slightly bigger.
After giving this a lot of thought, I scrapped my existing layout and started a new one. It takes a lot more room, so I haven’t gotten very far yet. Just a little bit of scenery, some track, and a tunnel. And I finally finished building my first model, a 2-8-0 locomotive. As you’ll see in the photo below, this larger scale makes possible an extreme level of detail and realism, right down to the textures of every surface.
The photo shows me standing by the locomotive to give you an idea of how big it is…
You see, I figured out that the problem was in making models that are smaller than the prototype. By building in Really Large Scale, say about 4x prototype, it’s easy to make something that looks at least as good as the real thing. But it does use up a heck of a lot of styrene. Also, I think I’m going to have to expand my layout by annexing a state or two.
