My father, who lives on the other side of the country, recently bought an older n-scale train collection, locomotive and coaches, all unused. He wants to build a “garden railroad” in which the n-scale train would simulate a g-scale set running in the back of a model house. I’m having problems doing the math to figure out what size/scale house and such would be usable without looking too big or too small? Any ideas? Would g-scale buildings be big enough?
The house would probably need to be a bit bigger then that.
With a G scale size house you would be simulating more of a ride on type train.
What Ken said is what I have seen too. Somewhere around Z scale is about the proper ratio, but hey , you can’t get more garden than a train that can carry you and your tools to the garden and back!!! It might be not enough of a difference to where people notice.
One of the modules on our g-scale club layout was a ride-on train setup on an oval…
The train was N-scale and matched fairly well as a ride-on…
Just to give you an opinion…
Thanks. That answers the question.
I passed the info on to my dad. He’s off to do some shopping for buildings and figures, scenery, etc.
If he used a 1" scale house and Z-scale trains, they would be about 1:18 relative to the house.
1 / 12 = .0833
1 / 220 = 0.0045
0.0833 / 0.0045 = 18.3
Todd Brody said:
If he used a 1" scale house and Z-scale trains, they would be about 1:18 relative to the house.
1 / 12 = .0833
1 / 220 = 0.0045
0.0833 / 0.0045 = 18.3
Yes, but he has n-scale trains to work with.
going from a N-scale presenting a largescaletrain, the models representing “1 to 1 scale” should be about “Barbie-scale”.
(easy math: 1:160 (N-scale) divided by 1:22.5 (largescale) = about 1:7 scale (figures of 10"))
Daniel Collins said:
Todd Brody said:
If he used a 1" scale house and Z-scale trains, they would be about 1:18 relative to the house.
1 / 12 = .0833
1 / 220 = 0.0045
0.0833 / 0.0045 = 18.3
Yes, but he has n-scale trains to work with.
OK…, then he needs to use a 2" scale house to represent 1:26.7 which would be about perfect.
My pal Jerry (Naptowneng) has a collection of n-scale trains, and one day he pulled out a WM loco. Here it is on my 1:20 EBT flat, being taken back to the shop for repairs.
It’s clearly ride-on size, and I think I did the math to suggest n-gauge is about 7 1/2" gauge in F scale. (45mm / 9mm = 5, so it’s 1/5th the gauge of 3’ narrow, or 7.2".)
If you are going to lay a 7 1/2" gauge ride-on in the garden, then you need proper track. N-scale std gauge has small ties, so what you need is Peco 009 (=HOe) narrow gauge.
And you discover there are cute little stamers available to run on your 9mm track. This is about the same length as the Wm loco above, and would represent a 1 1/2" scale narrow gauge loco running on 7 1/2" track.
Thanks.