Scale buildings not so scale

Welcome to traditional O gauge.

If you detail, decorate, adds cars and people. No one notices that my 6 story hotel is only 24'x24' 

Most buildings look best on a layout if they are selectively compressed. Few have the space for full-scale building footprints. 6" is a nice compromise allowing more diversity of buildings in a certain area.

Selective compression reduces certain dimensions (most importantly the overall footprint) while maintaining the look and feel of the prototype and keeping door openings, etc. full scale. It is an art to accomplish this for some larger prototype buildings.

Realism in layout building is a matter of "adjusting reality" to fit our space while tricking the eye of the observer to overlook our adjustments.

When modeling an engine or piece of rolling stock, everything must be to scale. But, a similar approach rarely works for scenery and structures due to lack of available space.

Jim

Few O gauge railroads are a scale 500 miles in length either, and

It's almost essential to use selective compression on a lot of buildings.  I have tried to limit it on my layout but still I have a lot.  And don't forget, 6 inch wide buildings are 24 feet wide, and there are buildings like that in many cities.  Below is a severely compressing building - the biggest building I have on my layout.  It's a scale 102 feet long and built to have scale doors, etc, and be O-gauge.  But its much smaller than it would be in the real world.  In reality a real cathedral would be at least twice as long and twice as wide and twice as high - at least.  

Good information everyone.  That all makes sense.  Lee, your building is awesome!  I agree with the need to compress for layout space.  I think the lionel and ameritowne buildings would be even better though if they would at least elongate them one way or the other vs. being square.  Having said that, it didn't stop me from buying several of each 

One of the reasons why the OGR buildings square shape is actually a plus for many modelers is that this uniformity lends itself to easy kitbashing.

It makes it easy to use all four walls with minimal cutting when constructing a large building flat or more complicated factory-type buildings.

Jim

Jim...I have been to the real OGR World Headquarters and it isn't as nice as yours!!

Alan

Gee, Alan.  I thought I was simplifying the "Headquarters complex" by leaving out the hangars for Rich's planes and the roundhouse for  the 765.  

Jim

Well, that house in whatever city that is barely wider than its door may be interesting,

but such models look grotesque to me, especially if designated a hotel, and it looks like it only has two available rooms.  (I slept in a bed and breakfast near the main

London RR station in a room so narrow you would hit the wall either way your rolled,

but that isn't the norm)  I bought an OGR kit to more than double the size of one "hotel" kit, and am awaiting delivery of another hotel kit to see if that one

will need similar treatment.  And these are to be small town "railroad" hotels.  I am

afraid I am guilty of enlarging a lot of kits.  I understand the real estate problem, but

it has to be believeable to my eye.

I do not know how to load photos, so I hope this works...

This is a structure that I had Joe Faulty at Model Structures Inc build for my layout...it is built entirely with 6" by 9" OGR building components.  It measures approximately 6 inches wide on the narrow ends and about 42 inches long.  I have three loading docks on this side.  The other side is painted white to represent a different building. The structure is intended to represent two different meat packing plants.  Eventually, I plan to put another structure on the "visible end" of the building (the end with water tower) to hide the narrow width.  That is one way to hide selective compression.

This structure is a view block but actually receives rail shipments on my layout.  It is tall enough (about 12 inches above the benchwork) to prevent me from seeing the other side of the peninsula. 

The "white" side of the structure has four loading docks. (It also only has windows on the third floor, the rest is solid brick panels...well, other than the dock, that is.) Because there are 4 docks...and the building is only 42 inches long, the "end" cars of a 4 car block will extend about 3 inches beyond the building structure itself.  (Typical 40ft car is about 11.5 inches between couplers.)

The "brown" side has three loading docks. 

On both sides, a 40ft reefer or boxcar will center on the loading doors without any problem because there is a wall panel without a dock between each loading dock. 

As for those small 6 inch buildings...I have a few.  Not every business along the right of way will actually ship by rail.  Some may have shipped in the 20s-30s-etc.  My "welding supply" is actually two smaller buildings that were adjacent and bought by the current occupant to house his business...

(Edit to add:  Photo was intended to show Joe how it looked on my layout...while the structure will end up within a couple of inches of where it is shown, I still need to actually lay the track to both sides of the packing plant and on to the future slaughter house and, of course, the stockyards.)

When we lived in So Cal in the 1960's we lived in a cool mid century modern home. I have the plans to the house today....and thought it would be cool to build a model of it as I model the same era in which the house was built. When I scaled it out....IF built to scale....it would have been the only house in the small town!!!

Like you say....our models are smaller than the real thing....but need to be unless you have a old gym to build a layout in!!! 

Because my "O" layout is only 5x8, I welcome "compressed" buildings. I continue to look for buildings in "HO" that will not look too out of place on my small "S" layout. In the process, I have found that there is a range of large to small "HO" structures, depending on what company made them. Some of the ready-made Woodland Scenics buildings look OK with "S".

Even if you have a huge home with an expansive basement, its not really enough space to accurately model the "real world" in 1:48 scale.  You'll either need to rent or buy a warehouse to fit in scale buildings and all the parking spaces they need etc.  I saw a post on here a few years ago inquiring about where to find a scale-sized wrigley field.  The responders were quick to point out that a 1:48 model of that would be HUGE!

Or just accept the compromises that come with O-gauge trains in a private residence.

You've got to remember the space limitations we are up against.

For example, in O scale, if one of us had a layout that was 110 ft by 110 ft we would think we were in heaven. But that still would only represent one square mile in real life. How many distinct towns do you come across as you travel one mile down most roads!!!

...and that 4'x8' table top that many of us fill with stations, roads, engine facilities, etc.? A 4'x8' table represents only 1.6 acres in real life!!!

The fact that so many layouts actually do achieve a good degree of reality at all is amazing. It is mainly a matter of how easy it is to fool our minds if we employ the proper "tricks" in layout building.

Jim

To go along with Jim's observations...

I have a friend who preached that "if your locomotive is in one town and the caboose in the other town, your train is too long or your layout is too small."

That is part of the reason that my current layout is intended to be about 5 miles of track in ONE town...from the connection to the main line, to the end of the track, a shelf industrial switching layout with about 18 or 20 different customers.  Some may receive as many as three inbound/outbound shipments per day (livestock, must be delivered...packaged meats, must be iced) while others may not receive any shipment for 5 or 6 operating sessions...

This is a scratch-built model of the house I grew up in. It scales about 4 feet narrower and 10 feet shallower, yet friends that knew me as a boy recognize it instantly.

Richard

Nice house. I should go photograph the house I grew up in before it becomes a parking lot.

Model Railroading regardless of scale is as much a Hobby of Balances and Comprimises, as it is about trains We each choose our own Balances and compromises. One of my favorite examples is how many HO scalers will say how they could NEVER accept that third rail, then describe their 4x8 layout depicting a 100+ mile sub-division with Big Boys rounding 18 or 22 inch radius curves, when a real Big Boy would require the equivalent curve of 40 inches in HO, and that would be at RESTRICTED speed.

We all pay our money, and make our choices,

Doug