How big would a fireplace be in an o gauge apartment?

Depends...

1/4"=12"

Typical firebox is about 30-42 inches. 

The masonry around it might be an additional 12"-24" either side. 

So 1 1/8" to  to 1 7/8" wide would look right.

I think it would honestly depend on the size of the one you are trying to scale down. Quick google of average fireplace size gives me a size of 44.5" x 40.5" Which would equate to about 0.93" x 0.84" for the opening where the fire would be. For the one that popped up after a search gave me a total size of 52.5" x 40.5" with out mantel, scaled down equals about 1.09" x 0.84". Including mantel 67 5/8" x 53.5" , scaled down equals 67.625" x 1.11". Though I still think it depends on the fireplace you are trying to scale down.

The real question should be how big an O gauge fireplace must be to accommodate an O gauge Santa Claus.

Seriously; you know how your personal height corresponds to a real fireplace.  If you have an O gauge figure; the size correlation should be about the same.  This isn't something that needs to be exact; it just needs to look right.

Curt

What looks good...

tcochran posted:

I think it would honestly depend on the size of the one you are trying to scale down.

 

Though I still think it depends on the fireplace you are trying to scale down.

I think everyone is giving the right answers here, i.e.:

• It depends on the size of the fireplace you're trying to model
• Whatever looks right
• Make it proportional to your own body size.
• Santa needs to be able to fit down it.  

I can offer a few other perspectives.  First, I think it's interesting that the topic of the subject you started asks about the size of a fireplace in an apartment (vs. in a house).   I happen to have some first-person experience with both apartment- and house-based fireplaces.

I lived in Manhattan for a few years during the 1980s.  The first apartment I rented was a 5th-floor walkup (ugh) on the Upper West Side.  The joke we used to make was that it was one of those "cozy" Manhattan apartments where you could cook dinner, answer the front door, and go to the bathroom all at the same time.

The apartment DID, however, have a fireplace.  In the jargon of Manhattan classified real estate ads, it was a "WBFPL" or wood-burning fireplace.  The joke I told about the tiny fireplace in my tiny apartment was that it would handle one Duraflame log, if you folded the log in half.  Yes, the fireplace opening in my apartment was about 18".  At 1:48, this is about 3/8" of an inch wide.  There seems to be very little point in modeling something like that.

I now have the good fortune to live in a home in New England that was built in 1879.  We have 4 fireplaces and all of them are quite large.  This makes sense since, when the home was built, they were the only sources of heat in the winter.

I think Curt (Juniata Guy) is on the right track.  Base your modeling on your body size or, perhaps better, based on the size of some O Gauge figures.  Take a look at this photo that I just got using an image search on Google:

The proportions of this look about right to me.  

What I would do would be to take 2 O Scale figures, position them about an inch apart (i.e., 4 feet) in front of a vertical wall inside your 1:48 apartment.  Then, take some paper and cut out an outline of a mantelpiece and place it behind the standing figures.  Then, within the side frames of the mantelpiece, cut out another smaller piece of paper to represent the actual fireplace.  As you can see in the picture, the top of the mantle would go up to the figures' torsos or shoulders and the top of the firebox would go up to their hips.  The width of the mantelpiece should be roughly the same on all 3 sides.

It would be a snap to model using basswood or even just construction paper.  Shoot, you could even just use paper and print a design on the mantelpiece on your computer.  If you put a flickering LED in the fireplace based on one of those campfire kits, you'd end up with a pretty good effect.  This would be particularly true if you positioned the fireplace, figures, etc. so they were all easily viewed through one of the apartment's windows.  The imperfect opacity of the plastic windows you use for the apartment will cover up any egregious sins you might make in modeling the fireplace.

If you really meant that this would be a fireplace in a house, just increase the size of the fireplace a bit.  Some of the fireplaces in the old homes here in New England are monsters ... you can almost walk in side them.  They were used for cooking, and drying clothes/ironing in addition to warming the house.

Have fun with it.  Please let us know how it goes.

Steven J. Serenska

you could put Z gauge layout on top of it......

Kinda like 'how fast does a car go' .....varies so greatly it can't be answered in that form. 

Here's another perspective based on my experience of creating O scale building and passenger car interiors; are you trying to match a scale-accurate structure or do you want the feature you are building to be seen inside a structure if anyone has a look? If the latter, which is usually my objective, the dimensions in the first reply above are right even though they are on the large size.

Here is a true "quarter scale" 1/4" = 1' model fireplace, which is 1" tall and wide, meaning that it's going to be hard to see inside a room if you want it seen.

You can Google "quarter scale fireplace" and find literally scores of products of various dimensions but most are really tiny.