O Scale size

[Fred Bear]

I'm running Lionel 0 gauge stuff, 1666's in particular, my first question is how high should the roof line of buildings be for correct O scale stuff? 2nd question:
When adding leads for track power, can you go from each 4ft add on, or should you run the wires back to the trasformer for each power lead drop for more consistent power? Thanks ahead of time for all those whol respond. Best Regards, Jake

[Roger Bielen]

Hi Fred. The scale usually used for "O" is 1 to 48, or 1/4" = 1'. You can buy scaling rulers but I find a decent ruler with clear 1/4" markings works fine. One way of determining how high a roof should be is to walk outside and measure your house and then scale it down.

For wiring most folks use a "buss", MTH DCS users should use something called a star system, I don't have any MTH so I'm not familiar with those details. For the buss, under the table run one, 12 ga. is best, wire for the power to the track and another for the U, (ground) and then tap into these for your feeds to the track, usually 14 or 16 ga.. On my layout the buss roughly follows the route of my mainline. I used 36" flex track and my connections are about every 6' or every other length.

[Fred Bear]

Thanks much, Jake

[lionelsoni]

Outside America, O usually means 1/45 or 1/43.5 or 7 millimeters per foot. For stuff like buildings, whose size varies considerably anyway, any of these is close enough.

The walls of a house are usually 8 or 9 feet high per story, with 1 to 2 feet between stories. The roof pitch is usually between 4 in 12 and 12 in 12, which means 4 to 12 inches of rise for each foot of distance from the outside wall, plus about a foot for the roof thickness. Higher pitches are more common in the North and in newer houses at all latitudes. The foundation height can vary from almost nothing for a Southern slab to several feet. Standard exterior doors are 80 inches tall and 36 inches wide; but fancy front doors can be larger.

How many feeder connections you need depends a lot on how good your track joints are. If they're soldered, a small layout doesn't need any.

AWG12 or 14 are good sizes for a bus (only one "s"). Whatever you do, use wire that can carry all the current that your transformer can put out, regardless of what the trains typically draw. These sizes are good for 20 and 15 amperes, respectively, which will handle any transformer you are likely to have.

The U terminal is the common only for Lionel transformers with multiple controls. When there is a single control, they perversely reversed the connections.