"Closest railroad scale to 28mm Pulp Figures minis?" Topic

I've yet to receive my first batch of miniatures from Bob at Pulp Figures, so can't check this out myself…

What railroad scale matches them best? I'm thinking S scale (1:64) should technically be perfect, but you can never tell the size of a 28mm figure these days until you actually see it.

Cheers

Algie

Plasticville buildings are a good match. I believe they are 'O' scale.

S guage is probably the most correct, but it is also expensive. O guage will probably be a little large, but is a lot more inexpensive.

I tend to use the O scale as well. I think O Scale has a different meaning in Europe than in the US, and the US version is maybe a bit bigger.

At 1:48 scale the US is smaller than the 1:43 popular in the UK, but be careful as there is a considerable margin of error in a lot of O scale stuff.

Plasticville buildings are halfway between O and S. They were originally intended to go with Lionel's O27 sets, but they were deliberately made a bit small to be usable with American Flyer S sets as well.

O scale works well. I use the Ameritowne for my gangster town. link
For more variety, Korber has good variety as well
korbermodels.com

I use Plasticville for my 25/28mm stuff. You can pick it up reasonably on Ebay. I got 5 or 6 buildings for around $25. USD

"I think O Scale has a different meaning in Europe than in the US"

"O" isn't a scale, it's a gauge. It sort of represents regular gauge track at about 1:43 – 1:48 or narrow gauge for 1:32

The track doesn't actually really match up to any scale properly being either too narrow or too tall depending on which way you look at it.

In Britain, people have standardised around 7mm to the foot – about 1:43.5 as the "normal" scale to go with it.

In America, the use of O evolved through the O27 scale which
puts 3/16inch to the foot scale trains on O guage track. 3/16:foot is 1:64, at which scale a 6 foot person is about 28mm tall… and hence US O is pretty much spot on.

1:64 with proper scaled rails is known as S scale, but S scale stuff is bonkersly hard to get hold of – most S modellers have to build their own rolling stock… Grandt Line (TM Terrain are a UK stockist) do S scale structural parts.

HO (half-oh), however is both a scale and a gauge; Trains are 3.5mm to the foot (1:87) running on scale rails; 16.5mm apart = standard gauge 4' 8.5"

In Britain, people run OO (double-oh) scale trains (4mm to the foot, 1:76) on HO gauge track; meaning the trains are actually running on slightly narrow rails.

P4 is the gauge correct for OO scale – it's 18mm wide…

O Scale for buildings and cars.
S Scale for people.

Miniatures are not scaled correctly, and it's absurd to try and quantify them that way.

An O Scale figures head fits perfectly on a 28mm-30mm miniature and looks great. However, a complete O Scale figure is far too tall to use with 28/30mm.

Thank You KatieL!!! I am cittrin' and pastin' that little lesson in railroad guage/scale. I always referd to "O" scale as !@#$%$#@ !!! because I thought it was just poorly realized 1/48 scale :)

An O Scale figures head fits perfectly on a 28mm-30mm miniature and looks great. However, a complete O Scale figure is far too tall to use with 28/30mm.

That says soooooo much about the anatomical awareness of most 28mm sculpters…

"Miniatures are not scaled correctly,"

Right on, Bro!!! I colonial game with 1/72 plastics, and when I got into "25mm" zombie stuff, I just about died seeing that practically every manufacturer varies up to 10-12 mm for their "25mm"s!!!!

I use O-scale for most 28mm miniature stuff and it works well. The problem with "anatomically correct" minis is that in the 28mm scale, they come out appearing thin and anemic when their proportions are exactly right. Miniature companies tend to bulk them up a bit so they look better from a table perspective, but the proportions get a bit unrealistic (more so with some makers than others).

While S gauge may be more correct, strictly speaking, I've found that 1/48 O-scale *looks* better most of the time, especially once miniatures are on a base that tends to bulk up their look also. But as several folks have said, there is a good bit of variance in that scale, so you have to be careful. Plasticville, Ameritowne, and several others have provided our game with lots of nice buildings, and most O-scale model planes, etc look really good with the miniatures, if a bit big.