Smallest model railway size compatible with model car scale?

[conny]

Looking at doing a diorama, approximately 4'6" x 2'3" wide.
The theme will be a 1950's-60's countryside village and want to combine a small railway line, (not necessarily operable, static will be fine), with model cars that are proportion to each other.
Now, if you understand that bit, what size railway should we choose to go with the car size?
I know there are various gauges/scales, such as N, HO, OO etc but not which one is suitable for standards model car sizes.

 

[RandomGrinch]

I know there are various gauges/scales, such as N, HO, OO etc but not which one is suitable for standards model car sizes.

Bare in mind, you won't find much British outline stuff in HO (1:87).
TT (1:120) is also making a comeback at the moment!
And whatever the guage, there are plenty of road vehicles manufactured just for model railways, with N (1:148-1:160) and OO (1:76) being the most popular.

 

[RandomGrinch]

The theme will be a 1950's-60's countryside village and want to combine a small railway line,

Modelling in narrow guage is also popular for small layouts, it's smaller, giving plenty of room for trackwork, and can be full of character.
Have a search for OO-9 layouts.

 

[conny]

Thanks RG.

 

[ericmark]

I do find the gauges confusing, they talk about 16 mm gauge, and I have seen some nice layouts, but the problem seems to be getting units which are not only in scale but in keeping with the cars, houses etc. No good having an USA engine with British cars. It seems what people do is emulate the narrow gauge, may be the Garratt engines now used on the Welsh highland were never originally used on that line, but people don't seem to worry about that, same with the coaches with verandas like on the Llanfair railway, people love to stand outside while it is travelling, so if you depict a narrow gauge then you have more poetic licence it seems.

 

[RandomGrinch]

I do find the gauges confusing, they talk about 16 mm gauge,

Where it gets confusing, is the standard model railway sizes we know - N, OO, HO, O etc. are based on a fixed gauge trackwork, rather than simply, a specific scale.

If we were to model a narrow gauge layout based on 1:76 scale, this is known as OO9 and the trains will quite happily run on N guage track, with a gauge of 9mm - hence the 9 (similarly with narrow gauge O: O-16.5, running on OO guage trackwork).

And when we take your 16mm scale example; that represents 16mm to the foot (a weird mix of imperial and metric anyway), or about 1:19 - G Scale.
For narrow gauge G scale, the track can have a gauge of 32mm - SM32, or it can use G gauge track with a gauge of 45mm, portraying a non-existant real life gauge of 2ft 9 and 3/4 inches.

And as an aside, the UK (for historic reasons) is devoted to OO gauge.
Continental HO scale locomotives run on the same gauge track - 16.5mm.
The track gauge is approximately correct for HO at 1:87 scale, but vastly undersized for 1:76 scale.
If the track gauge was scaled up to real life, it would be less than 4ft 1 and 1/2 inches!
Finescale modeling in 1:76, is generally called 4mm modelling - 4mm to the foot and you could choose a track gauge of EM or scalefour.

It's simple really, isn't it!

 

[RandomGrinch]

. No good having an USA engine with British cars.

And why not? Have you visited the BMR?

Oxford Diecast are a good place to start looking for vehicles in a scale of your choice...

Oxford Diecast - Leading Supplier of Diecast Model Vehicles

Oxford Diecast is the world’s largest manufacturer of 1:76 diecast scale models. We have one of the largest ranges around producing trucks, planes, cars, farm and railway locomotives at 1:148, 1:87, 1:76, 1:72, 1:50, 1:43 and 1:18 scales.

www.oxforddiecast.co.uk

 

[ericmark]

Looking at running railways, the yellow one at back came from a sugar plantation, the centre one from Zillertalbahn and green one belongs to the railway. The railway as original ran through the streets (not any more) the result is bells and whistles and head lights. But to run with only two steam engines is not really going to work the countess and the earl are old engines, the 8 mile of track has 3 passing places so in theroy could have four trains running, and on a gala with goods trains it may have them, but normally only two. However the 2'6" gauge means models are hard to do with 16 gauge there is no standard track, well not much in the UK still running yet at one time it was standard for the military.

But unless non standard gauge, the engines have no bells as they travelled in fenced off track, no head lights as the can't shine far enough ahead and would blind the driver from seeing things a mile ahead, so we have to use British standard gauge engines to look right.