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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by jrbarney CJM89, Someone will probably suggest you just use a pair of dividers to pick off major dimensions against the scale, then use an HO scale rule to lay out your building parts. I would like to suggest that you take your plans and a good HO scale ruler to the local Kinkos, Office Depot, Staples or similar store that has a copier with an enlarging feature, rather than a plain scanner. Since HO scale is approximately 1 foot = 7' 3", if my arithmetic is correct, I think you can enlarge your plans to slightly less than 414% to near HO scale, possibly in two or more steps depending on the copier. Use your HO scale ruler to check the enlarged plan to see if it's acceptable. There may be some distortion. Bob NMRA Life 0543 [/quote] cjm89, Let me make a supplemental suggestion if you have problems blowing it up to about 414% (my calculated number is 413.3%). Go to an architect's/engineer's supply store (usually this is a place that does blueprints) or a college/JC/CC bookstore and pick up an inexpensive engineer's scale and an architect's scale (plastic will do just fine-lots of times these are on sale at the end of the academic year). These are triangular shaped rulers with 6 scales on them. The architect's scale is in fractions of an inch per foot (such as 1/8"=1', 1/2"=1', etc., useful for elevations and floor plans) and the engineer's scale is in decimal units (useful for site plans in scales such as 1:10, 1:30. 1:50, etc.). You want the scale on the engineer's scale marked "30" which is 1:30. Measure the dimensions and write them on the base drawing that you are using next to the appropriate line. You don't have to get within a fraction of an inch to be right--remember 1" in HO scale is 0.0115 inches, imperceptable to the eye, and no one, and I mean no one, in their right mind is going to put a rule to your model and then go out to Burlington and field-verify your measurements![:D] Remember another thing, too. We looked at that facility a number of years ago in view of potentially proposing on a restoration job--that is one BIG building, and you'll see that when you look at it scaled up. An 85' car is about a foot long in HO, and that station could quickly overwhelm a room. So you'll probably wind up compressing it, anyway, which means you can be even coarser on some of your measurements. Another idea from the good old days. If you have decent, overlapping color photos of the elevations of the building (try this with a 70 mm lens if you don't--that's approximately what the eye sees), you can scan them into an engine like PhotoPaint, retouch them to get rid of any shadows, and print the flagstone out on a good color printer to glue on your walls. That would be close to 100% accurate, and, if you think about it, the relief is immaterial because of the difference in scale (1/2" mortar recess is about 5 mils) or you can carefully scribe the mortar joints if it doesn't look right, remove the photo, and paint to match. This is a technique that I've seen architects do on their models and it's quite believeable. As a matter of fact, the same techniques (painting on the relief) have been used on numerous real buildings--for a genuine doozie, come down to Fort Worth sometime and look at the courthouse annex downtown, where all of the relief is painted on to match the pink granite courthouse, and you truly have to look twice to realize something's just not "right" about this! Good luck. You've bitten off quite a project! [:)]
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