After reading the article in GR on building a saw dust burner I'm beginning to question the "size" of my baseball field compared to the size of my town. My baseball field looks too large although its smaller than the scale dimensions call for. My miniture town looked okay until I put the ball field next to it. Now it looks too small. Richard Weatherby, author of the wood burner article, says the burner model should be 20 - 30" in diameter in 1/2 inch scale but that he sacaled his down to 12" in diameter as a "reasonable size"..
My topic for discussion is how do you all figure what the right "size" should be for such things as towns and depots and ball fields and school yards and .... well what it is you build? Yes I know space is always limited so we try to squeeze our miniture economies into the area we have and yes all too often it looks crowded. So how do you solve the too crowded look with the reasonable size issue?
Thanks,
Rex
Eyeball it, thats what I do all the time. I will rely on my own visual judgement farmore than any rigid adhereance to any scale dogma, its a model RR which means that unless you are fanaticly scaling everything based on a 1:1 prototype, there is always some form of scale compression and selective perspective and modeling based on that. I prefer it look good and be off scale than being rigidly accurate but visually distractive.
Have fun with your trains
I build everything as big as I can in the space available. By that I mean that my sidings are as long as possible, but still too short to be accurate. My indoor section is limited by the physical depth of the benches, so I model selected buildings, rather than every building one might see in a 'Timber Town', and I mostly model building flats, one inch deep buildings along the backdrop. If I build a full building it is usually a small shed or an outhouse.
The only building built to full size was the engine shed, but I chose a small, single stall shed. It is just long enough to cover the Shay, my largest engine. A lean to on one side is the second stall, and it has a lower roof, which just allows the rail tractors underneath.
Outdoors I built a 'station' as big as I could in the space between the curves at either end of the available space, but everything is still very compressed, limiting the length of trains.
If I had more space I would probably still build small stations, but have more of them to allow more operational possibilities, rather than one scale size station.
Mick
Chief Operating Officer
Northern Timber Company - Mt Beenak
I go for the "composite" look where things are sized to where they look right, not just staying with scale fidelity. This is true mostly for outdoors where you are limited and restricted by the 1:1 scale real world where true life things can throw scale perspective out the window. As for my trains however, I like to run all scale matching- that is to say that a train will be made up of all the same scale dimensions, whatever it may be, as a mis-matched train is very noticable relative to itself.
The Dixie D Short Line "Lux Lucet In Tenebris Nihil Igitur Mors Est Ad Nos 2001"
For me I am pretty scale strict with my trains (I try to keep it as close as I can to 1:20.3). But for buildings I eye-ball it more and do what looks right. That's just my opinion though. (Even if your sidings are undersized, that's a good liking scene Mt Beenak-nice pic.)
My railroad, the N-C-O Div. is a collage of WP Reno Branch and SP Modoc Cutoff. Both lines ran long trains, however any train longer than ones peripheral vision and some view blocks, trees and buildings etc., seems like a long train. For buildings I use selective compression and building flats. But mainly I use the ten foot rule if it looks good from ten feet its ok. The main thing is, it’s your railroad, you can do what ever you like.
Have fun, Rob
Most of my buildings come from Garden-Texture plans or scratch built in 1:24 dimensions. The ball field was built to 1:24 and then squeezed into a 10X12 foot space. That would make the outfield wall somewhere around 200 scale feet versus a regulation 400 feet that ball parks are supppose to be. It still "looks" too big at half of the scale size. I guess I'll drop it down some more. The batters will love it! This trial and error sizing is costing a lot of outdoor carpet. I was hoping that someone had an algorithm or rule of thumb for getting sizes in the "ball park" the first go around. (Sorry that was a bad pun.)
I found that for many years, when I built something, I would always see the faults in the job. This resulted in rebuilding or giving the object away. Now I place them on the layout and dont notice the small faults. The same applies for scale objects (in reason).
Build what looks good to your eye and enjoy what you do.
Here is a web site to Cockington Green. This business is open to the public, situated in Canberra, Australia. Have a look at the model building section and some of the photos.
http://www.cockingtongreen.com.au/index.html
I suspect that some of the playing areas have been shrunk down a little for "poetic licence" reasons. That is not important because it is pleasing to the eye and you don't notice many small "modifications" Also there are many details, that if it was not for the brochure that is given to look for these, you would miss them!
As well as train rides there is also LGB trains running through the international area that is controlled by the public.
Andrew at the Sandbar & Mudcrab Railway
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