The wild range of O Gauge Boxcar Sizes!

Yep.....learned that the hard way when I came to O3r back in the 1990's.  I think the smallest 'O' box car is Lionel 'Baby Ruth' pre-war that is so common. The K-Line you show may be a old Marx tooling and thus not really O scale. (3/16" scale?) 

Saying that the size of a box car change greatly from 1925 to 150 so if you model the 1950's both are OK in a train. 

Lionel's O-27 boxcars such as the famed 6014 and similar boxcars from the postwar era are almost 1:64 (S gauge) in size. The O gauge 6464 series falls into the "Traditional" size and is selectively scaled to fit and blend with other traditionally sized locomotives and rolling stock designed for operation on tight radius trackage. Then you have todays scale sizes.

This thread goes in depth on them:

https://ogrforum.com/...andamp-o-27-car-size

As an added bonus, not all prototype boxcars are/were the same size.  Those 6014 cars are just about perfect for the mid-19th century.  Yes, I know that they depict a much newer prototype, but the issue in question is sizes.  36' cars--i.e. 9"-- remained in some kinds of service into the Transition Era.  Look at pics of prototype trains:  the cars are not cookie-cutter in size in lengths and height.  The variety is actually prototypical in many ways.

Good things come in small packages, also  Variety is the spice of life. I run smaller box cars with 027 engines and they look terrific.

It's one nice thing about being a 1:48 scale operator (I am not one of them). The choices can be hit or miss. I bought some MTH O27 passenger cars, love them, but they look way too big behind my Lionel O27 Junior Berk. I think this is where "selective compression" is a problem because manufacturer's use their own standard. MTH's traditional Rail King cabooses appear to be scale sized and, thus, too big when combined with their 6-packs of rolling stock. There, too, I've found MTH Rail King rolling stock a bit bigger than K-Line and Lionel but as others have pointed out, in one long train, different sizes work fine together.  

Still, for my stuff, I found MTH's Rugged Rails line to be better matches for my other Industrial Rail, Lionel, and K-Line semi/non/traditional scale RR.  Boxcars are line with the 6464s or smaller.

bmoran4 posted:

Lionel's O-27 boxcars such as the famed 6014 and similar boxcars from the postwar era are almost 1:64 (S gauge) in size. The O gauge 6464 series falls into the "Traditional" size and is selectively scaled to fit and blend with other traditionally sized locomotives and rolling stock designed for operation on tight radius trackage. Then you have todays scale sizes.

This thread goes in depth on them:

https://ogrforum.com/...andamp-o-27-car-size

 

 

This is really telling. When I got into O-Gauge in 2002, I started with my grandfather's O27 sets plus one of my father's old tinplate sets (heavily worn). Great start. Then, my father and I went to a train show and we couldn't believe how big the scale items were relatively speaking. The only boxcars I had were the operating milk car and operating merchandise car. They are the size of the 6014 you cite, I think.  Even my first 6464 boxcar dwarfed them and, as you've shown, the 6464s are not as big as 1:48 boxcars.

I've visited a fellow forum member who has moved from semi- to full-scale. His layout is enormous covering a full basement in a ranch home. As good as any I've seen on this forum. 1:48 scale engines that would look inappropriate on my 8'x11' layout look perfect on his. Big, wide curves (96", I think) look perfect for his 1:48 scale articulated engines. I don't have the space or cash for scale, so I opted for traditional, but am amazed at the variety this hobby has to experience.