Actual Scale in 1/87 ??


Mingo Assist

Mingo Assist

re·sus·ci·tat·ing the EL
Okay.. Im stupid.

Now with that out of the way recently a topic on true HO scale came up at our local hobby shop with friends and a NMRA official {for our area conventions}.
The topic was 1/87th vehicles ... As it turns out I had a few minutes at work and decided to measure a block truck {GMC MoW} next to a wide body GP40-2 unit sitting awaiting transformer release duties the other day and Ill tell you what..THINGS ARE OUT OF WHACK.
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In conclusion the NMRA gentleman made this statement.. Have you ever tried putting HO scale people in HO scale model cars.. they would all look 8 feet tall........
However in some matchbox cars they look perfect., and a few ive got from walthers.
So my question is am I the only one that just builds doing a eye to distance perspective ?
Has anyone else ever ran into this?
 
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I have no experience with cars, but I do with buildings. Quite a few of the buildings I have came from my uncle's much larger layout. My little layout has these buildings in much closer proximity. There are few HO buildings that look rediculous next to each other. I've had to pick and choose which buildings not only look like they belong next to each other, but look to be the same scale as well. I imagine it's like clothing, which is something I know quite a bit about. You can go to buy a pair of 34 waist pants form one store and they fit. Go to another store and a 34 is too tight. The point is, I think these manufacturers build there products on an approximation. I guess you have to be the judge of what looks correct.
 
Honestly, I haven't experienced any HO conflict with sizing up figures, cars, building, locos, and etc. In fact, I will take a Woodland Scenics figure and hold it next to a building or something just to make sure everything looks right. Sometimes the large industrial windows or small ones in town buildings will throw us off, but after checking they have been correct or close enough. One thing I have ran across was Walthers Instant Horizon backdrops are way out of scale.
 
I don't think that is the car manufactures, but rather the FIGURES that are too BIG. I know the trade off there, bigger means easier molding...
 
European buildings, particularly Heljan, are grossly undersized for HO. I have a 3 story Triangle Drugs Heljan model that I had sitting next to a Walthers Merchants Row II 2 story building and I had it move the Heljan building further away from the Walthers building because the 3 story Heljan building was smaller than the 2 story Walthers building. European figures vary all over the board in terms of how closely they actually match 1/87 scale. I have a set og Preiser police officers and the tallest officer stands about two feet above the top of a patrol car. OTOH, one of the officers has a dog that's nearly as big as the officer. The firefighter set is right on the money in terms of size so I suspect that Josh is correct, some figures will be larger depending on the amount of details. Most vehicles I've found to be very close to 1/87 scale but some things, like large utility truck and fire trucks, are over scale by about 10%. Again, I think it's so more and better detail can be added. I've found that, as I've added more figures and vehicles to my layout, the individual size sinks into the background. You just have to be careful not to show a six foot guy going into a five foot door. :)
 
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