I’m looking for a small HO scale fire truck that will fit inside the old Plasticville fire house (the one with the 2 red doors on the front and Plasticville over the doors.)
I’ve tried Mini Movers and Hot Wheels but they are all too big. Does anyone have any suggestions as to where I might find a small fire truck that will fit inside the Plasticville fire house?
Thanks!
I have an Athearn and two Imex, that should fit nicely. Don’t have an HO Plasticville so can’t test fit for you.
Used to have two beauties (mfg unk), pumper and ladder, that fit beautifully into my O scale Plasticville fire station. Unfortunately the station and trucks were lost in our house fire. They sure were beautiful and well detailed.
Good luck,
Richard
I think most Plasticville buildings are actually smaller than HO scale, so maybe you should change to a firehouse with bigger doors instead of trying to find a “too small” fire truck.
A member of our local HO scale club put a Plasticville post office building on the layout. When I bought an Athearn postal truck and put it in front of the building, the box body on the truck is taller than the post office.
I don’t know how close to true HO scale many Plasticville buildings are, but for sure, only the small number of Hot Wheels specifically labled as 1/87 scale are HO. Most of the Hot Wheels and other similar vehicles, if to any actual scale, are probably closer to 1/64, or S scale. As an example, I have two HW Mustangs, one labeled as 1/87, and one standard. The 1/87 (HO) Mustang has a wheelbase slightly more than the diameter of a wheel smaller, and side by side is actually considerably smaller. I do have some Hot Wheels and other vehicles, but mostly just heavy off-road or construction equipment, not cars and trucks. As a kind of guide, I use the length of my index finger between the first and second joints, If a car’s wheelbase is longer than that distance, it’s too big.
The HW fire equipment is probably also significantly larger than HO as well.
Boley makes some very nice looking Fire trucks. They are on Ebay all the time at great prices. Boley makes a lot of very nice trucks like roll backs, garbage trucks, tow trucks etc.
I’m beginning to think that HO Scale is merely a close approximation, not anything really to scale…one Plasticville box I saw said it was 1/8 scale. Some buildings by Pola are small and others by Model Power are HUGE compared to things from Walthers. Bachmann buildings run the gammut from too big to too small in comparison to other manufacturers’ buildings of similar types of buildings.
I’ve discovered that cars, trucks, people, and buildings all seem to be different sizes even though they are all marketed as HO Scale…each manufacturer seems to have a different idea of just what constitutes HO Scale.
Vehicles by Model Power are larger than those that come with, say, the auto haulers from Life Like. The Life Like Scene Master pick up trucks are larger than other plastic cars which, in real life, weren’t that much different in size.
I’m not a “rivet counter” and really don’t care all that much if the vehicles are different sizes or some of the houses are smaller or larger than the others but I still would like to find a truck or two to use with the Plasticville fire house simply because my granson thinks the building is “cool” (probably because he was able to just snap it together easily and didn’ t have to mess with glue.) Since this is “our” layout, I’m trying to find fire trucks that fit into the Plasticville firehouse.
We also have the Plasticville police station and the Life Like Scene Master police cars seem too big for the police station so we’ve just put them on the street, away from the station and they look ok.
We don’t live near any big cities or hobby stores so I’ve ordered a few fire trucks online only to find out that they were too big to fit through the fire house doors. We don’t have a “building on fire” where we could put the fire trucks on the layout, away from the firehouse. Guess I’ll have to start scouring rummage sales…perhaps I can find a cheap truck or two that would work.&n
You are correct - HO scale is really 1:87**.1**, not 1:87 [:P]
OK, in terms of scenery, structures and details*, being out of scale much truer in the 1950s thru early 1970s than today - particularly lines like Bachmann, LifeLike, AHM, Tyco and other “Train-Set” level of the era. IIRC starting in the 1970s manufactueres seemed to keep more to scale, although a few thngs still snuck by over the decades. Note “Train-Set” level is the key, there were plenty of smaller scale manufacturers producting excellent scaled detail pieces, often cast-metal details.and fine vehicle kits (e.g. Jordon), but these were not meant for the $39.99 “Brute Hauler” oval + 3 freight cars – includes “power pack!” – train-sets found in Woolworths and Montgromery Wards
Nowadays, Presier figures are kind of a gold standard - I have lots from the unpainted figure bulk-packs, and they scale out at roughly normal human dimensions - whereas older Bachmann figures (even after removing the ugly base) are up to 10% bigger (in addition to having poorly molded faces - hence they tend to be relegated to statutes, manniquins, and half-hidden interiors where their oversize dimensions are not important or noticible).
Once in a while the old-school model designers got it right (the 1967 Camaro & 1968? AMX vehicle bodies Tyco sold in the 1970s are actualy pretty close to prototype dimensions, and look good if you fill & sand the under-bumper fender spaces, and this has been commented upon in the 1/87 vehicle groups since it is rather rare. Even now, the LifeLike Scenemaster stuff like the School Bus, Dump Trucks, Milk trucks look very toylike to me - even stripping paint and repainting wouldn’t seem to help - so what are you gonna do? Well, like me, just don’t buy them…
Of course in the real world, some buildings re bigger than others. Generally the best guide is to look at “human” scale things like doors or windows. If they’re correct, the building is probably correct.
Plasticville was originally marketed as being “O-S scale” meaning it was somewhere between O and S scale, so could be used on (primarily toy train layouts) in either gauge.
At one time it wasn’t uncommon for “HO” buildings to be 1/8" scale (1:96) since it was believed it was sort of a ‘selective compression’ that allowed you to have a larger building in a smaller area, and that the smaller buildings made the trains look bigger (and apparently to people at the time, more realistic?). I wouldn’t be surprised if the Plasticville HO buildings weren’t 1/8" scale. They’re pretty crude compared to true scale buildings by Walthers or other manufacturers.
Most of the Model Power cars are true 1/87 scale. Life Like, not so much. You can’t really compare the Life Like brand with the Model Power/Reel Rides/Wild Cherries cars which are a better bang for your buck. Norscot makes some great looking transport trucks for the people interested in them.
Having both the Plasticville and a Lefton ‘Roadside Ameria’ Firehouse based after a Seattle prototype, I have found it best to have a long driveway in front of them to display/hold the trucks. The Plasticville due to its small size the other because its a solid chunk of plaster.
As far as how close to scale Plasticville is I made some minor changes to the O/S Courthouse and used it on my HO layout and it still scales on the small size to similar structures in real life. No where near the size of Philidelphia lankmark it is designed after. If you look at the houses and stores in the HO line there is a noticable shift to larger, closer to scale buildings after about 1960.
Take a look at a website named ‘DIECAST DIRECT’. All scales/sizes colors, etc. Hope you find them.
saltydog61
Just remember, even if you change to a fire station more in tune with the HO scale, most of the vehicles by companies like Matchbox, Hot Wheels, and just about any similar cars are usually scaled to a 1/64th scale, which puts them into the S guage size. And many of the Plasticville go back to maybe the early to mid 1950s, when people may not have paid a lot of attention to the correct proportions.
Strangely, when I was browsing a Tuesday Mornings in SC about 6 months ago, I ran across 3 Matchbox cars, among them a Ford Pinto, that were labeled as true HO scale. Got them for a buck each.