Hi, I bought a Couple of Williams Diesels ( O guage) . They work fine. BUT , The box cars I have seem small with them… The Diesel is so much longer are taller. Are my lionel box cars ( Some Penn Flyer stuff) to small or cheap???
I see other layouts that have a nice match…
Any Ideas.
Thanx,
CS
You can have Scale [O] engines and semi-scale cars. Some folks mix scale cars and semi-scale cars. Nothing wrong with that. The cars you have are Traditional and 027. That means semi-scale. If you enjoy running then, just keep on.
Hi CS,
Welcome to the world of 3-Rail. It sounds like your Diseasels are full Scale size (1:48) and your boxcars are Traditional size. Traditional size is not made to an exact scale, but rather selectively compressed to a smaller size, while attempting to keep things some what proportionate.
If You think this is Bad, then you will probably have a lot of sympathy for the “G” scalers, what many refer to as “G” scale is really anything that runs on Gauge #1 track, “G” is just one of about SEVEN scales that all run on Gauge #1 track, ranging from 1:32 on up to 1:17 scales. 1:29 and 1:32 are usually used to model American Standard Gauge, and I believe that 1:22.5 and 1:24 are used to model European Metre gauge, while 1:20.3 is used to model American 36" Narrow gauge, ALL of these SCALES are run on Gauge #1 track (45mm gauge, IIRC)
In addition to having more than half a dozen different scales that all run on the same track, various companies have their own couplers that are not all compatible with each other. Fortunately Kadee makes a line of couplers for Large scale use, and these are starting to become a “Defacto Standard Coupler” much as their HO couplers have become.
K Line even has at least THREE different sizes of rolling stock, Scale, Classic and O27. Their Classic size stock cars are a favorite of mine, I like the size, Very Nice detail too. I have mistakenly bought both “Scale” (Too BIG for my tastes, though EXCELLENT detailing) and also an O27 stock car on evilbay, not knowing the difference( I KNOW NOW) I like the 640 series cars, and now know how to tell them apart by the stock#.
Doug
Some of the early traditional sized equipment would be scale for the time frame the models were meant to represent. Box cars were considerably smaller prior to World War 2. The molds was continued to be used (tooling is expensive and it rarely gets scrapped) with modern paint schemes and reporting marks and as newer scale models of newer equipment came along, the older cars look like dwarfs and were relegated to the “traditional” category.
As real railroads never throw anything away until they have to some of these older cars were still around into the early 1960’s. When safety requirements made them no longer economically worth maintaining they were retired/scrapped. I remember seeing some of these cars mixed in with consists of more modern 40 and 50 foot cars and they really did look like dwarfs.
Any and all scales can be run together as long as you utilize a little creative arranging of your consist. Don’t put traditional and scale next to each other, put semi-scale between them. This will be a bit more pleasing to the eye, so the consist can be setup this way and the size differences will be there but they won’t stand out as much.
I’ve been using the piggy back trailer cars to transition from scale locos to the 027 box cars. The trailer tops are higher than the locomotive, but seem to be in scale next to the boxcars.
Kurt