How to calculate long hood door sizes?

[NYSW F45]

I need help really bad on this. I am building a custom built model that requires me to build a section of the long hood using styrene and cannon & co. doors. Only problem is, I have no way of getting the size of the doors as they are not the standard size engine room doors. I had emailed Cannon and they said to print the pic and measure the doors. Well I can do that but how do I take convert the measurements from a pic to the HO scale size so I can order the correct doors?

Here is a pic of the model im building. I need help finding out the dimensions of the doors from under the radiator and back.

 

[jdetray]

Hi Steve -

You'll need to know the actual dimension of something in the photo, such as the overall length of the locomotive. If you know that, it is straightforward to determine the dimensions of anything else in the photo. It is a simple matter of proportions.

You can either print the photo and measure with a ruler or (my preference) open the photo in an image processing program and count the pixels.

Either way, you must know the actual size of something in the photo.

- Jeff

 

[NYSW F45]

Ok i'll print it out tomorrow. gotta get the power cord out. After that i'll post the length.

I know the radiator doors are all 65'' tall, it just figuring out which width they are. But i'll hopefully get this info up.

 

[cv_acr]

That first shot is a nice square-on side shot so should be excellent for scaling the unknown doors.

Like mentioned above, if you know the dimensions of at least one other feature, you can scale the image from that.

 

[NYSW F45]

well i found the actual length of the model im building is 62'5 if that helps. i cant find the power cord for the printer.

 

[jdetray]

Hi Steve -

Are doors circled below the ones you are interested in? And do you know they are 65" tall? And are we talking about HO scale?

If the answers to these three questions is "YES," then ...

HO scale is 1/87 actual size. Therefore, you need to divide the full-size dimensions of an object by 87 to get its dimensions in HO scale.

You know the height of the doors is 65". 65/87 = 0.75" (to the nearest hundredth of an inch). So in HO scale, the door is 0.75" tall.

By measuring from your first photo, I determined that the width of the door is one-third of its height. 65/3 = 21.67", the width of the full-size door. To convert to HO scale, divide by 87.

21.67/87 = 0.25"

So, if the height of the full-size door is 65", the dimensions of the door in HO are 0.75" tall x 0.25" wide.

- Jeff

 

[NYSW F45]

Ok well i got the printout of the first photo, train measures 10.5'' long. Second pic(overcast photo) is 8.75'' long.

But what i need to know is not the ho scale but actual or as close to the proto scale. And i need to know all the sizes of the doors from the radiato's back, all 9 doors on the conductors side and 10 on engineer's side along with the metal spacing between the doors. Atleast this i what someone from Cannon and co. told me to do before ordering the doors.

 

[NYSW F45]

here's a pic showing what i need dimensions for, same would be said for engineer's side.

 

[NYSW F45]

Well i am like a fat kid in a candy store right now, full of excitement!!! I had emailed NJ Transit asking for any help in getting the correct measurements for the doors I want help with. THey actually forwarded it to someone who said they can accompany me to get 100% accurate measurements!!!!!

So now i'll be able to get the door measurements, but also a crap load of under frame detail photo's.

 

[jdetray]

Hi Steve -

If the doors are all 65" tall, then here are the widths (in inches) as nearly as I can determine. These would be more precise if we had larger, higher resolution photos, but this is the best I can do. At the resolution of these photos, one pixel is nearly a whole inch on the engineer's side.

Engineer's side (door widths in red; spaces between the doors in blue):

Conductor's side (door widths on bottom line; spaces between doors on top line):

The photo of the conductor's side is larger and therefore probably more accurate.

Although I have given the dimensions to the nearest 0.1", the actual precision is probably closer to 0.5".

All of this is based on the doors being 65" tall, as you said in Post #3. If the doors are taller or shorter than that, then all of the dimensions shown here are wrong.

- Jeff