Evening all,
I could not find an answer to my question and I had it somewhere, but not sure where…But I am looking to know the scale footage form 1:1 scale to HO scale:
being: 2471’
2736’
4411’
4052’
6286’
1967.5’
5211’
Thanks folks
40’ x .138=5.52
50’ x .138=6.9
60’ x .138=8.28
To elaborate on Running Bear’s post:
-
The scale ratio of HO scale is 1:87.1.
-
3.5mm = 1 scale foot in HO = 0.138"
The examples he gave are three common freight car lengths, in prototype feet and HO equivalent inches.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - in 1:80 scale, aka HOj)
I think all you need to do is divide it all by 87.1
Correct - that will tell you how many feet you need on your H0 model railroad layout to exactly represent e.g 2471 feet in reality. In this case 28.4 feet.
But when you are building a model railroad, it is smart to keep three or four considerations in our heads while converting from size in the real world to size on the layout.
- very few of us can afford to make 28 feet long sidings (or whatever the original 2471 feet represented). Pretty much any track distance on a model railroad is “selectively compressed”.
Instead of running a train that has 50 cars in reality, and needing sidings for such a train, you choose to e.g. run an 25 car train or 12 car train instead, something which cuts down on your siding lengths, and yet gives the impression “longish train” in the confines of a model railroad.
A 40 foot car is 40 feet / 87.1 = 0.46 feet long in H0 scale. Or put another way - you can fit in two such cars in one foot of track on a H0 model railroad.
An 80 foot car is twice as long - you can only fit one such car per foot. Or two such cars in two feet of model railroad track.
A 60 foot car is midpoint between these two - you can fit about 3 such cars in two feet of model RR track
Thus a train consisting of an engine and 12 40 foot cars would at a rough estimate need a siding of about 7 feet, instead of a siding of 28 feet.
- You can make a distances driven seem far longer by having your trains go slower.
If it takes a train moving steadily a minute to go from one end of your layout to another on your layout, it