Quotes

Life is short, break the rules. Forgive quickly, kiss slowly. Love truly, laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that makes you smile. - Samuel Longhorne Clemens (Mark Twain)

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Calamity - Train Size vs Building Size

In a Old West Building thread, from one of the forums I occasionally frequent, we have been having a discussion about the size of the train versus the size of the buildings. We tend to get very focused on how the engines and cars look with the miniatures that we forget how they might look with our terrain. Anyone that has read my rantings on the subject knows that I'm firmly in the S Scale camp and have stated on more than one occasion that O Scale is just to big. Well, prompted by some responses from the other forum I snapped some pictures of my American Flyer S Scale 4-4-0 and the sole baggage car I own next to some of the western buildings that I have been working on. I took a lot of pictures to give you an idea of how my slightly oversized S Scale models look next to those buildings. This is a bit picture intensive (and really most of my posts tend to be picture intensive anyway so what did you expect?) so let's see how things match up!

First lets take a look at the engine up against some one story buildings.
Knuckleduster/Tri-City Laser. About what I expected, these buildings are short so are almost hidden behind the engine.

Battle Flag - I like this look better. The False front is easily seen bu the rest of the building is mostly hidden.

Sarissa - Precission. Maybe a little on the small side but I can see the False Front . I like the look of this overall.
Now my engine up against some of the two story buildings
Here is a Gamecraft building. Looks about right. I wish the windows were a little higher up.

Here is the Knuckleduster/Tri-City laser Hotel. This one looks pretty good. The location is different because there is not enough depth on my workbench to fit the length of the hotel with train in front of it so I had to shoot to the side.

Battle Flag Photographer's Studio. I consider this one to be just about perfect.
Sarissa-Precision. A little on the short side but not bad looking.
Now let's take a look at how the baggage car looks. It is not as tall as the engine so you can see more beyond it.

Knuckleduster/Tri-City Laser. This is looking pretty good, at least you can see its not completely hidden.

Battle Flag General Store. You can see the entire False Front,  looks good.

Sarissa-Precision. Again this one looks a bit on the short side but you can see a good portion of the False Front.
Gamecraft building. Overall the height look good, if the windows were a little higher I would be very happy.

Sarissa-Precision. Still on the short side but definitely passable

Knuckleduster/Tri-City Laser. Height wise it looks good, but the windows could be a little higher.

Battle Flag. Pretty much perfection in my book.
The last comparison is how the engine and baggage car look against my most dominate structure at this time, the Livery Stable.




I think the Livery stable still looks pretty dominate in these pictures. I'm pretty happy with how these are meshing together. The engine is a bit on the large side as well and is probably not exactly S Scale. I think if it was a little smaller it would be a near perfect match to the buildings.









4 comments:

  1. It works best with the battleflag building indeed! The others are to small!

    Greetings
    Peter
    http://www.peterscave.blogspot.be/

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    Replies
    1. That seems to be the best match with my train. I'll have locate the Battle Flag buildings closest to the track.

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  2. These photos show actual 4-4-0s and actual buildings:

    http://www.google.com/imgres?start=261&hl=en&sa=X&tbo=d&biw=1543&bih=788&tbm=isch&tbnid=_zjNabhNsuI5_M:&imgrefurl=http://locomotive.wikia.com/wiki/B%2526O_No._25_%2522William_Mason%2522&docid=oAGjxJ7gpW85SM&imgurl=http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120828005054/locomotive/images/6/62/Mason_Strasburg.jpg&w=576&h=366&ei=ZA37UIfGJons8gTel4HQDg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=251&vpy=443&dur=7584&hovh=179&hovw=282&tx=134&ty=104&sig=112264554068791119076&page=9&tbnh=131&tbnw=218&ndsp=31&ved=1t:429,r:69,s:200,i:211

    http://www.google.com/imgres?start=229&hl=en&sa=X&tbo=d&biw=1543&bih=788&tbm=isch&tbnid=RZyUeJCKgfbBmM:&imgrefurl=http://www.cashgroth.com/iacent.html&docid=WvigAkj1nxosFM&imgurl=http://www.cashgroth.com/iowacentral/4-4-0no26small.jpg&w=506&h=208&ei=ZA37UIfGJons8gTel4HQDg&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=346&sig=112264554068791119076&page=8&tbnh=113&tbnw=247&ndsp=32&ved=1t:429,r:55,s:200,i:169&tx=136&ty=62

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    Replies
    1. Good pictures! It also shows a couple of variations of the 4-4-0.

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