We have a collection of Department 56 Snow Village buildings that we put out every year at Christmas.
Can anyone recommend the proper scale train for these buildings?
Hello! I don’t believe Dept. 56 specifies an exact scale, but many O gauge railroaders have used them for years with their Lionel/Flyer/etc. trains. Unfortunately, the people and accessories sold with their buildings are grossly oversized and more appropriate for large-scale trains. Rene
In my opinion, the Dept. 56 “Snow Village” series buildings (Dept. 56 also offers a number of other series, which all have different sizes) look best with O gauge trains, as long as you stick with the buildings themselves and not the oversize (usually) figures and other accessories. However, some of the accessories offered do, indeed, look pretty darn good with O gauge, so it’s very difficult to generalize. To the best of my knowledge, nothing Dept. 56 offers is made to a precise scale.
I also know a number of Large Scale hobbyists who use “Snow Village” structures on their indoor pikes, even though the buildings are undersized for Large Scale. There’s sure nothing wrong with that, especially if the buildings are kept toward the background where their smaller size helps to add the perspective of depth to the layout.
I have a large collection of “Snow Village” acumulated over many years, and really like the overall look of those structures on an O gauge layout that has a Christmas theme.
A Bachmann On30 Christmas set would be perfect.
I use the lemax Christmas village, which is much the same on my christmas layout-- I run a Bachmann On30 through it, and it looks just great. I put ) scale figures by the doors and they look pretty darned close. The figures that are supposed to accessorize the structures scale out pretty well for my Aristo stuff outside. The figures don’t seem to be particularly one scale or another-- but most are close to 1:29. They last well outside too.