I am starting to layout the plans for my highways for my 4x8 HO layout. I'm confused about the scale for HO. Can anyone help me out. Thanks
Trainman11
A lot will depend on your era, and what kind of road you are modelling.
You can look up the official highway specifications, which will give a width in feet. Divide that by 87 to convert to HO, and then you might want to multiply it by 12 to get an answer in inches.
I try to make my roads 3 inches across. That comes out 21 3/4 feet. In a pinch, I'll go down to 2 1/2, or just over 18 feet. In this picture, the road coming right out at you is 3 inches, while the cross street is only 2 1/2.
I've got a RIX highway bridge, and I think it's 3 inches across for the pavement width.
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Not sure that I understand your question, but, unless you're doing "forced perspective", the scale is still HO. The width of the lanes will depend somewhat on the era in which you modelling, with more recent roads wider than those of the '20s or '30s. Generally, the lanes on a layout would be slightly narrower than their full-scale counterparts, so as to avoid overwhelming the rest of the layout. There are probably standards listed somewhere (try google), but, if you're modelling from the mid-'60s to recent times, you could just measure a nearby prototype. Cut a piece of paper to that width in HO scale, place it on the layout, then trim it narrower (if necessary) until it looks right with a few vehicles sitting atop it.
Wayne
Normal 0
Street Widths
Here in Anderson Indiana, each lane was about 12 feet wide. It was dependent upon the type of roadway (main street, residential or back country road, etc) but most business streets and highways were built at about 12 feet per lane. Earlier, in the twenties, roads were only about 20 feet wide total, so, if the portion of the town you wish to model was built in that era, a 20 foot roadway is fine.
If each lane were 10 feet wide, that would be 1 and 3/8s inch. So a two lane street would be 2 and 3/4 inches. 10 feet is what I use for the lanes of my city streets. Modern hiway lanes would be wider. Parking lanes would have been more narrow in the 50s, say 8 or 8 1/2 feet.
As a guide in HO:
8' = 1 1/8
10' = 1 3/8
12' = 1 5/8
15' = 2 1/16
20' = 2 3/4
25' = 3 7/16
Around here, little has changed in the city streets since the late 40s. A few sidewalks have been removed to widen the lanes and a few streets have had major work done on them to add additional lanes, but the width still stands at about 10 to 12 feet per lane and most side streets are really about three lanes wide total. Small towns would have been this way as well. Some of the main streets in small towns actually had wider streets and also used angle parking.
Country lanes and county roads were much narrower back then, in some cases no more than 12 or 13 feet total. If you met a farm truck you were in big trouble. Part of the problem with all of this is that the width of streets and roads vary according to where you are and what the local street and hiway departments did. This is why there are no set widths for streets in any scale. You can calculate what you need according to your area and era always keeping in mind what looks good to you. Rather than calculate 3.5 mm equal 1 foot, I just used a scale rule and a regular ruler to change the actual scale feet into inches so the figures are not exact, but are very close. I highly recommend a scale rule. The one I have is a 'General' no. 1251. It's been well worth the money.
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The modern highways are about 10 to 12 feet per lane. This works out to 1 6/16 inches to 1 11/16 inches in HO according to my scale ruler.
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When deciding how wide to make a road I've always just taken two vehicles...put them side by side, not so close they are swapping paint, and there you have it. If you are going to provide on-street parking (parallel or diagonal) just plan accordingly. One lane roads...one vehicle width so on and so forth.
Mainetrains
'there's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear' Modeling the Hard Knox Valley Railroad in HO scale http://photos.hardknoxvalley.com/
A modern 2 lane road is about 24' wide. This works out to 3.31" in HO which looks too wide in my opinion. (especially on a 4x8) I use 3" for my city streets which includes parking lanes and 2.5" for country roads.
loatharI use 3" for my city streets which includes parking lanes and 2.5" for country roads.
Is that one driving lane and one parking lane? My roads are about 6" and include two lanes of traffic and one lane of pariking on each side (totaling 4 lanes).
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ns3010- Three inches is 2 driving lanes. (one in each direction) and a sort of a half lane parking lane on each side. I know it doesn't measure out correctly, but it looks better in my city. I tried 4", but it didn't look good with the smaller size buildings I'm using. The little town square where I live is sort of set up like that. You have to dodge around the parked cars a bit.
This is the cross street seen in the photo above:
Here, the roadway is only 2 1/2 inches wide. Likewise, the sidewalks were also made narrower than those above. I did this because I was tight for space, squeezed between the tracks and the layout's edge. But, I noticed that the narrower road really improved the "brick canyon" illusion that I wanted to create, even if most of the buildings are only 2 or 3 stories tall.
For my HO railroad layout I am using a lot of old slot car track (which is 3" wide) to make a long curved dog bone loop connecting two towns. The cars, trucks, and buses are (rather pricy) HO scale Faller motorized vehicles, which operate with interior rechargeable batteries.. They are steered by a magnet tongue,which follows a buried wire. What I have discovered is that the wire is not necessary, since the two slotcar electrical contact rails, guide the magnet tongue, to keep the vehicles guided properly. One can easily form overpasses and reverse loops. The 3 inch width allows for the vehicles to travel past each other in opposite directions, and appears quite good for use either on highways or as town main streets.
Bob Hahn.
Mr B.-I didn't think of narrowing the sidewalks on the side streets. Great idea!
Buy a scale rule, you will use it all the time. And by the way, it is permissible to actually take a tape measure and go measure something. You can go out and measure the width of a road or sidewalks.
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Another thing to remember if modeling the '50s or earlier, highways still had curbs. In fact, I know of one stretch of highway in Iowa that as of about 2000, still had curbs. I haven't been that way since so it could have changed by now.
Tom
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3.5mm=1 foot
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fiatfan Another thing to remember if modeling the '50s or earlier, highways still had curbs. In fact, I know of one stretch of highway in Iowa that as of about 2000, still had curbs. I haven't been that way since so it could have changed by now. Tom
That only applies to a couple of states. Most states did not have curbs.
Loathar, youre right. 6 is probably too big, and I probably could have gotten away with around 5. The reason for making my roads so big is that there is a factory in the town, and I needed big roads for the trucks.