Anybody purchased the Rock Island Hobby N Scale vehicles? Are they true 1/160 or 1/150?
I bought some N Scale autos a while back on Amazon that were advertised as 1/160 but turned out to be 1/150. Passable in the background but overscale in the front.
Looking at the RI models on the Midwest Model RR site they look a lot like the Amazon ones. Any comments?
Thanks guys.
I got a set of them. A Mercedes, a BMW, two Porsches, and . . . something else.
I don’t know the first two well enough to be able to identify model or year, and they are not current production.
The Porsches are 911s, and look very similar to current production. Here are my measurements.
Automobiles really need to be exactly to scale. You can fudge elsewhere, but people are very familiar with autoobiles, and the difference will be very obvious.
-Kevin
They are probably Japanese N Scale, which is 1/150 (British N is close in scale to the Japanese) We and the Germans use 1/160.
A lot of the Japanese 1/150 is still very acceptable in 1/160th. Japanese vehicles tend to be smaller than their American counterparts so the scale discrepancy doesn’t show. For example I bought some of the Kato vehicles and they looked very comparable to mini metals.
That reminded me. In the 1990s Kato had a set of automobiles called “toyotas” that were almost perfect models of mid-1960s AMC Ramblers.
I guess the scale difference helped the illusion.
-Kevin
I think that was the set. They were generic enough to work fine. I recall seeing the Rock Island cars at a swap meet and they looked in scale and pretty generic. Even if they were the Japanese 1/150 the cars sold for the Japanese market are significantly smaller so it works out. There is a whole lot out there made by Kato and Tomy in the way of n scale that works well. Tons of more modern buildings too.
Everyone seems to be missing the fact that the set in question consists of German vehicles. Well, as I stated, I couldn’t place one of them.
Why does that matter to what scale they’re in? Your measurements come out to aboubt 1:153.
Edit to be clear, the other reference to Germans above is about manufacturing. A Japanese N scale model of a German car will be 1:150. A German model of a German car will be 1:160.
Where are the Rock Island Hobby models manufactured?
I was also a huge fan of the Green Max N Scale buildings. Lots of detail and good prices.
Terrible box art.
-Kevin
Not to go way off topic but I have found it interesting watching some YouTube videos that show Japanese thrift/second hand stores that carry trains. Interesting concept.
Jim