Let’s face it, there are a lot more scratch building detail parts available in HO then in N scale. As a N scale modeler, I sometimes need to use detail parts from HO scale and “downsize” them so they will fit on whatever project (usually buildings) I’m working on. I call it “downsized details”. Two examples of HO scale parts that I had to modify to fit N scale buildings include HO scale railings (Grandt Line) as well as HO scale skylights (Campbell Scale Models). Whatever works, as long as it visually doesn’t look out of scale (either by height or thickness). Does anyone have any other examples of utilizing a detail part from one scale to use in another?
Jeff B
In a somewhat relevant way, I’ve found some 1:72 and 1:76 military items are very useable in HO scale. I have a 1:76 DUKW truck from Airfix, and I’ve noticed Airfix makes structures and details in addition to the vehicles. Theres many neat bits in the military sections of the hobby shops.
I needed some large flood lights for several projects in HO. I discovered Grandt Line #150 Galloping Goose headlights in O Scale worked perfectly for this application. A small SMD LED cemented in the housing worked perfectly!
I used N scale railings on two vertical tanks, to help push them farther away than they are. Don’t have a decent picture of them, as they are kind of hidden behind my milling and food plant.
There are some details – industrial roof vents and chimneys come to mind - that come in so many sizes in the prototype that models of them are really of no fixed scale. Famed kitbasher Art Curren was not above using N scale railroad water tanks to model the smaller rooftop water tanks on his HO structures. I have also seen the bodies of N scale tank cars used to model smaller industrial or farm tanks in HO.
Curren also advised HO modelers to check the Walthers N scale catalog because he felt some European N scale roof tile sheets were better suited to HO. Of course now Walthers has taken care of that by combining the catalogs. And one reason they did that was because there was a fair amount of duplication between the catalogs anyway when it came to scratchbuilding parts etc.
Another fairly obvious example is the cut stone walls and abutments that Chooch sells - I even think they mark some of them as being “O and HO” and “HO and N.”
In my own case I want some open loads of the VERY large shovels and drag lines that the Bucyrus Erie factory shipped on the C&NW. I have used die cast toys and models of much larger scale items – even larger than 1:50 in some cases – and disassembled them into component parts to see which portions look plausible for HO.
CNJ had some steam engines with a large steam turbine generator mounted on the rear of the tender for passenger car lighting. An O scale casting works well to represent this in HO.
I did use O scale guttering, back when I was modeling in N scale. I needed some water troughs for a stockyard I was doing, and the guttering was just the right size.