I’ve just embarked on my journey into garden railroads and while looking into differnet companies equipment I noticed that there seems to be a few different scales that are sold. My question is do the different scales look ok together? Does an Aristocraft locomotive 1:29 look proper pulling say Bachmann’s 1:22.5 or 1:20.3 rolling stock and vice versa? I am also wondering which manufacturer’s equipment would be recomended by most people? I realize much of this would come to personal opinions but I am curious what people think of different brands and why.
Any answers you can give me on these subjects would be great.
Hello Rastun.
This was covered in full recently.Go to about page 7 I think. it is under-Scale? & should that really measure that much-
Should answer all your questions
Troy
Thank you Troy, for remembering about where that thread was. It was helpful for me. I am definatley in the area of “if it looks right, it is”, I want my garden railroad to be for relaxation and conversation not for it doesn’t have the right amount of rivets so it’s wrong. Being as I plan to model this railroad from nothing more than my imagination, I can always justify anything as to “that’s just what the prototype did” [(-D] The biggest reasons I was wondering how they looked together is because, I do like some of bachmann’s locomotives and I like aristo’s passenger cars. Where I live I don’t have a hobby shop that sells much of anything in “G” scale so I would actually have to purchase items to see what they looked like compared to each other.
Jack
[#welcome]
Don’t worry to much about the scale if it’s what you want to run go for it, I have never been into rivet counting. (personal choice)
I believe you should run what you like, after saying that I try to stick to 1:20 scale with mostly Bachmann geared loco’s (Shay’s Heisler’s etc) with narrow gauge rolling stock mostly DRGW.
This suits my steep grades and and tight curves.
But remember it’s your railroad so it’s your choice.
All the best with the future.
Regards
Gary.
In my opinion you’d probably be better off not mixing 1/29 and 1/32 with 1/20.3, 1/22.5, and 1/24 scale. The former tend to be models of standard gauge trains (4’ 81/2" track width) while the other scales tend to be models of narrow gauge trains (3’0" between the rails). Again, in my opinion, an MTH Challenger (1/32) scale looks pretty silly on the same track with, say, a Bachmann consolidation (1/20 scale). The two model locos are both very large whereas the prototypes are vastly different in size.
It’s your railroad, you run whatever looks good to you. We have one forum member that runs a Bullet train AND a tiny 0-4-0 steamer pulling little 4 wheel passenger cars, makes him happy.
I have the Bachmann 1:20.3 Consolidation and some AMS 1:20.3 rolling stock to go with it. If I place my Hartland Doozie Railbus next to them, it’s like the difference between O and S, or S and HO scale. The Doozie is way too small compared to the Bachmann when they are side by side, but if the Doozie is out on the mainline away from the Bachmann, the difference in size is not as obvious.
I don’t count rivets but I do TRY to live an orderly life (doesn’t always happen) so I TRY not to mix scales…its not orderly. I made the mistake of buying Bachmann’s narrow gauge 2-8-0 (1:20) and it looks un-orderly pulling my 1:22 narrow gauge cars so I will eventually sell the thing.
As a person who can tell the diference between standard gauge and narrow gauge just by looking at it, I can’t mix scales and feel comfortable with that. To me this is just a mish-mosh and looks more like a cartoon than a real train.
But, as the hippies said…“Different strokes for different folks” so mix several scales if you want to, its your layout.