So I had an idea. Using the old trick of forsed perspective I could use some N scale at the back of my layout.
I thought that I could even run a separate N loco on a short stretch - question is though, how far back from the HO stock would the N have to be to be effective?
There was an article of mine some years ago published in MR and 48 Top Notch Track Plans that addressed this very problem - using two different scales together on the same railroad with operating trains. While design was an N/Z scale combo, the proportinal principles discussed will work with HO/N as well. Look for the title - From N to Z: A dual scale layout that will look as big as all outdoors.
Charles
I did that once. HO and N on the same layout. The trains were identical, except for scale. The HO ran in the foreground and would enter a tunnel. A short time later the N train would emerge from a tunnel in the background, cross to the other side of the layout and enter another tunnel. The HO train would emerge from a tunnel in the foreground shortly afterward. Really blew some peoples minds with that one.
That’s exactly what I was thinking! It must be a great technique to see in person.
I recall a logging layout in San Antonio with mixed scale, O and HO. The layout was built to be viewed from only one side, with O in the front and at about 3 feet elevation above the floor. Hand laid track, I think there may have been a loop of track but the emphasis seemed on a log mill, with slow speed switching, hand-laid track on LOG ties, grungy weathered equipment. Perhaps not more than two feet back but some three feet higher was a simple HO loop. Way way up the mountain. Nosebleed country.
Fantasitc layout.
I think it can work. It seems to me that he trick will be to have enough scenery of indiscriminate scale between the two to make them really separate visually. I can see this working better in tricking the camera than is tricking the eye. Everything is going to try to work against you, lighting, shadows, angles… So to win, you have to control as much as you can. force the angles things can be viewed from, force the lighting to emphasize what you want seen, and to hide what you don’t. Make sure there is nothing of 1:1 scale in sight that will give clues to the actual size of things. I don’t have the guts to try it, but I’d love to see it really work!
As Vail and Southwestern RR says, it takes a lot more design and work than simply putting an N-scale train in the back ground. I’ve seen many many many people try this and they all failed miserably. Everyone of them looked exactly like what it was. They all had the effect of making the layout look more contrived and more toy like.
I think the main thing to make it work right would be to get the trains as far away from the eye as possible. At least 4 feet, preferably something more like 6 or 8. It has to be far enough that the stereoscopic vision of the eyes can be tricked. This is much easier to do with a static scene than it is with a train moving through. Then there has to be some visual break between the scenes that totally separate them from each other.
If anyone knows where photos of layouts of this sort are posted online, please share links to them. Would appreciate seeing how this has been done. Have long considered trying such myself, especially with eyesight getting older and N details becoming harder to see. Thanks!
[C):-)]Rob
Behind the harbor bank, which covers most of one 24’ wall of my HO layout, there was a six inch wide space, connecting corner mountains on either end. I mounted (cork based) HO track on the front edge of a 1"x6" and screwed a 2"x2" to the back edge of the 1"X6". N scale track was then mounted on a cork base on the 2"x2", which disappears into the mountains,(with dogbone loops) at each end By using a plastered window screen angled strip to join the upper to the lower surfaces, and adding small connifers and weeds, and 12ft. of N scale landscape picture banner behind the raised track of the N scale, creates a forced perspective distance illusion that is quite acceptable, even though the HO and N scale tracks are only two inches apart. As Jeffrey suggested, the illusion of the HO train disappearing, and the N scale version of the same train appearing later, contributes to the illusion. The HO and N scale trains must not be visible at the same time, or the illusion is lost! I will Post photos, when the scene is completed. I mounted the two tracks on 12ft. of spliced 1"x6", so that if I don’t want to keep the N scale, I can remove it easily. Bob
Kalmbach’s just-published, on the newsstand now, “Great Model Railroads 2008,” has an article on pages 86-93, which does just that in Robert Lawson’s, “Take a turn around the Southern.”
The main HO Scale layout fills a room roughly 24’x30’ at a height ranging from 42" - 54".
The N Scale portion runs all through the middle, and even around the “shelf part” layout at a height of 60" for a scenic-enhanced forced perspective. The N Scale engines are steam, circa 1945-1955, and wind in and out of hilly and forested coal country, briefly in the middle of the HO Scale staging & yard trackage, and up on wooden trestles to boot! It is not uncommon on the track plan to be 2’ to 6’ into the middle of the layout.
The N Scale is primarily continuous running in and out of some tunnels with brief mining track spurs. The secret seems to be how the HO Scale action “over-powers” the N Scale portion, and not the other way around. In operations, you are so busy managing the HO Scale system while the N Scale trackage meanders as a by-product of the layout theme and as part of the more distant higher/looking-up scenery.
The best thing to do is to remove all the HO junk and build a larger track plan with the N scale!![(-D]
But seriously folks… With HO, you have to make so many compromises to get a decent scene into a small place, the idea of using an N scale track for “forced” perspective becomes viable.
I’d rather stick to one scale (I picked N) and design a layout that doesn’t require such a difficult to execute device.
The idea of running the identical train in two scales also wouldn’t fly on a layout that’s meant to operate like a railroad. What happens when you switch out a block of cars?
Nah. Pick one scale and do it right.
Lee