what looks best with an O guage train

[Anonymous]

I am wondering if someone has an opinion about what looks best. I have an O guage train and I am looking for scenery but I am confussed about the scale. Is the scenery O scale for an O guage train? I have been reading the forum and going to the sights suggested, but I think I am confusing myself. I am looking at buying an HO scale scenery set but I am not sure if it will be too small. It seems to be a confusing topic for us newbie's so maybe someone can clear things up in generic terms... Thanks for any input posted

[lionelsoni]

Since a lot of O gauge trains are undersized for the scale, making the scenery a little smaller too is appropriate, unless your train is really up to scale. If you are in doubt about whether yours is really to scale, a quick test is to measure the overall width, which should be close to 2 5/8 inches. Typical widths are more like 2 1/4 or 2 3/8.

However, it is not uncommon, even on "scale" layouts, to compress the scenery somewhat, just because there is rarely anywhere near enough room to represent a complete railroad and its surroundings. Buildings are shrunk, particularly in depth, and often made smaller all around when they are far back on the layout. Some layouts actually run trains of a smaller scale in the distance.

Some things don't matter very much. Trees, for example, come in all sizes in the real world; so a big HO tree can pretend to be a smaller tree on an O layout.

[Big_Boy_4005]

Please don't confuse scenery with structures.

Scenery is things that occur in nature, structures are man made. Like Bob was saying scenic material doesn't really come in different scales, except that trees are often marked for their relative size, but that really doesn't mean much. Keep in mind that 12" is about 50 feet, and a six foot tall person is about 1-1/2" for these sized trains.

Structures however, start to look out of place if you use HO. I understand the temptation, since the selection is much greater in HO than it is in O, and you can fit a lot more in by using the smaller ones. But as soon as the train gets near one, the illusion is blown.

I'm not exactly sure what sets you are refering to, but if they have man made objects in them you may really want to pass on buying them in favor of similar items in O.

[brianel027]

Cooker, it also depends on what types of trains you'll be running and how big your layout will be. If you're going to run the full 0 scale cars like the Weaver, Atlas, some of the new Lionel and K-Line scale sized cars, you'll probably want closer to scale sized buildings like the pre-built ones from MTH and the Walther's Cornerstone series for example.

If you will have a small layout with more traditional less-than-true-scale cars like the Lionel 6464 box cars, Plasticville buildings and K-Lineville buildings arre perfect. P-ville was developed in the 1950's and was sort of between 0 and S scales, so they could be used on both Lionel and American Flyer layouts. The K-Lineville buildings are mostly derived from the old Marx tooling, once again from the 1950's. REMEMBER, there was not this obcession will true scale in the 1950's... the trains were for kids and were marketed as toys.
As far as general scenery, keep in mind, what you are doing especially on a small layout is building an impression - you are suggesting there is more there than there really is. Like when you paint with watercolors and you wet the paper and let the blue paint bleed into the water to make the sky of a landscape painting... you are NOT really painting a true to life looking sky - you are SUGGESTING the sky. Or in a song, when they want to suggest a train, the drummer will play a certain way... the rhythm guitarist will accent that... like with Arlo Guthrie's recording "The City of New Orleans."
Just remember you are making an impression... suggesting a city scape or the mountains, etc. Small HO buildings could be used as background buildings if your layout was big enough to have that scope of distance. I've seen guys do this... using HO scale items at the very back of the layout to suggest things are further away than they really are.
Take a look at some photos of more toy like train layouts along with the photos of the full-basement sized prototypical layouts. Just go with the feel of what you like. Remember, that #145 Operating Gateman from Lionel has a blue man who is like over 20 feet tall in scale... but it's a fun accessory and even guys who run scale sized stuff still have the #145 on their layouts, so go figure.
It's about having fun first! You can't model true reality on a 4'x8' board. But you can create a nice impression, and sometimes that's much better than 'true reality.'