how to determine scale miles on a layout

[matthewb507]

hey guys

I was wondering when your building your layouts, how do you determine what the scale miles are, like for instance im building my ho scale layout to represent the ice jackson subdivision which is 105 miles from austin mn to jackson mn and im building it in sections 2ft by 6ft so im wondering is how do you convert the measurements down to scale miles, am i making any sences at all lol, so what what are your thoughts on it. so what im trying to do is to figure out how big this layout is gonna be to try and recreate all of the 105 miles of the line down to scale miles.

any suggestion would be great.
thanks matt
modelin modern ho scale canadian pacific dm&e ic&e
www.icejacksonsub.com

 

[Charles Smiley]

well just multiply measurements of your layout (feet, or inches), by 87. Or divide prototype feet by 87 for how big the model should be.

 

[MGWSY]

Well I just average out the scale miles as 1 mile in HO is around 60 1/2ft Its actually 60ft 7.4375". So if you want to do a 105 mile RR your looking at 6365ft in HO scale or well over an actual mile of track.

 

[zoegraf]

My bedroom layout's length is 50 feet long; that's less than a mile! The art of compression is so important for so many modellers. This is why i model a branchline and rarely run a train that has more than 7 cars.

 

[cuyama]

so what im trying to do is to figure out how big this layout is gonna be to try and recreate all of the 105 miles of the line down to scale miles.

Unlikely.

As others have noted, a scale mile is determined simply by dividing by the scale ratio. For HO scale, a scale mile is just over 60 feet of layout, in N scale, it's 33 feet of layout.

So let's consider your chunk of railroad.

105 miles = 554400 real feet
divided by HO scale (87.1) equals 6365 feet -- or more than one actual mile of HO layout in your layout space. Hope you own an empty gym.

It's a little better in N scale, then you only need 3465 feet of actual layout, or about 578 2X6 modules.

Seriously, the bigger issue is that most of the miles in a real-life railroad line are pretty boring from a model railroad standpoint. So the art of layout design is selecting the key interesting pieces, compressing them to fit, and then finding ways to join them up in a reasonable space that results in an engaging layout.

That's usually a lot less than the actual length of the real-life line. For example, the layout below is based on the narrow guage Southern Pacific Keeler Branch, which was about 75 miles long. Strictly to scale, that would be 4500 feet of layout or so -- nearly a mile of layout!

But by focusing on three key locations and figuring out how to link them up, about 80 feet of main line represents the 75 miles and can be coiled into a spare bedroom.

Read more about this HOn3 S.P. Keeler Branch model railroad track plan here.

Good luck.

 

[matthewb507]

hey guys thanks for all the input i guess that would be alot of space to eat up so then i will consider key places that i will model and do selective compression on the key places then. I wish i did own a empty gym lol but then again something that big i probably wouldn't be able to finish it in a lifetime. So i do appreciate the answers on how to convert to scale miles.

thank you very much guys
matt

 

[CBCNSfan]

so what im trying to do is to figure out how big this layout is gonna be to try and recreate all of the 105 miles of the line down to scale miles.

Hi Matt, as suggested the way to go is selected compression. Pick out some places/scenes that you'd like to have on the layout, model parts of them in detail (people seem to notice similarities to a place and associate the scene to a location) then between each of the scenes well just not too much detail to make it real interesting so that a viewer then becomes interested in seeing the next scene. I believe that would work for you.

Cheers
Willis

 

[Southwest Chief]

For model train layouts, selective compression is the only practical way to go.

If you want true scale lengths, then train computer simulators are a good alternative.

 

[galaxy]

Unless you own a warehouse, selective compression is your friend.

There is a shortline sub near me that is about 45-50 miles long, I have thought about modelling the whole thing,in Nscale, but definitely don't have the space.

If I model it, I would only model the important trackside industries, and leave out the "countryside" parts of the route.
________
Paxil Class Action

 

[RW&C]

If you really want to do the whole line, there's always T scale.