Building O scale houses on a budget - what comes first - L-W-H

[Mazz]

Hi everyone. Thanks for all your feedback  and great advice. I need a little bit more help. I'm having trouble converting O scale into inches. Can someone help me on how big a door or a window would be in inches. How big would a house need to be in inches instead of O Scale. 

[KRM]

1/4" = 1' for 1/48th scale, last I checked. Or maybe I am having a moment.

[Peter JG]

Mazz

Have you tried Tribute to Tinplate over at Big Indoor Trains.  They have plenty of intructions and plans for building houses and stations out of cardboard.  That might be a good start for you.

 

 

 

 

 

[KRM]

Peter JG,

[jwse30]

A lot of houses are 24' deep, which would be 6" in O scale. How wide it would be would depend on when it was built and whether it has an attached garage. A house built in the 60's to late 70's might be 1000 to 1200 square feet or roughly 60 x 24 (15" x 6" in O scale). This would be a fairly common size for a bilevel, trilevel, or ranch house. A two story or cape cod house may be a bit smaller because it has the second level to add space, perhaps only 50' long (12 1/2" x 6").

 

Newer houses may be a bit larger, whereas older house would be smaller. The 24' dimension is fairly universal up til the 90's when engineered trusses started becoming more common (around here anyway. they may have been being used elsewhere earlier or later...) which allow spans longer than 12'

 

A standard exterior door is 80" tall x 36" wide. To scale that out divide each number by 48, which gives you 1 2/3" x 3/4" Since no one measures inches in thirds, I would say 1 5/8" x 3/4" would be plenty close enough for most work.

 

Hope this helps,

 

J White

 

[Mazz]

Hi J ! and thankyou .......im still not getting it  in inches?A standard exterior door is 80" tall x 36" wide. To scale that out divide each number by 48, which gives you 1 2/3" x 3/4" Since no one measures inches in thirds, I would say 1 5/8" x 3/4" would be plenty close enough for most work. so a door in o gauge is 12 inches  by 3x3/4

 

[robmcc]

You can also multiply the full size number by .021 and that will get you darn close to 1:48 scale. So, if your door is 36" x 80", then 36 x .021 = .756" and 80 x .021 = 1.68". You can see the decimal numbers are quite close to the above posts fraction numbers. ( .75 = 3/4 and 1.625 = 1 5/8). Years ago, I bought an O scale ruler for scratch building and it's been invaluable. You should be able to get one at your local hobby shop or from Micro-Mark. I would highly recommend one.

[Mazz]

I thank you all! I did some research and bought some o scale doors, I measured the door and its 42 mm or 4.2 long  and it's 10.8 wide now o scale figures are 1.1/2 inch and half.... it looks like the door is to small..help please..

[lionelsoni]

Forty-two millimeters is 1.654 inches (42/25.4).  Multiply that by 48 and you get 79.370 inches, very close to the standard door height of 80 inches, or 6 feet 8 inches.  Multiply the scale figures' height of 1.5 inches by 48 and you get 72 inches, or 6 feet, so there's no problem with the height.

You didn't say what the units are for the "10.8 wide" door.  A typical exterior door would be about 36 inches wide, which, divided by 48, is 3/4 inch or 19.05 millimeters.