"German Roof Slopes in Degrees?" Topic

From pics and images of models I've seen, it appears the average single-family country residence, and/or town and village buildings are a bit more sloped than here in America, so does anyone know what the average roof slope is for lowland areas, and the foothills in Germany?

I suspect in the mountainous areas, where they get snow, the roofs would be much more steeply sloped, in order to shed it in heavy storms.

I need to scratch-build some buildings for my WWII, and post-WWII, Cold War gaming, so am looking for structures appropriate from the 1930s – 1980s.

Also, any rough ideas on sizes (length, width, height) of your average, rural family home size would be helpful too.

Not sure if most people lived in single family homes there, or if they tended to live in larger multi-story, apartment buildings in the small towns and villages. Info on general sizes (length and width), number of floors, etc., for those would be helpful as well.

I'm buying up Auhagen's HO/TT buildings for 15mm Cold War. Check them out for inspiration if you don't like the prices. They also do a really good range of building parts in that scale (1:100 or something similar) like doors, windows, pipes and tv antenna. Really great options for anyone looking to do the cold war in Germany.

link

I think the roof slope is extremely regional, and many of the more 'modern' buildings have flat or nearly flat roofs, the idea seems to be that is it safer in built up areas to have someone shovel the snow off in small lots rather than have a few tons slide off in a mass and bury some car or pedestrian (see YouTube for fail videos of this ;-)).

Rural areas seem to have steeply sloped roofs on residential buildings and flatter roofs on storage sheds and the like with thick walls and few if any windows and doors.

Great site McWong!

So HO/TT is a scale and its the one that best matches 15mm/1:100th ?

I googled "auhagen wargaming" and found some pics of that HO/TT range used with FoW, looked absolutely spot on. I've attempted 80s gaming in 20mm several times and never got any traction, but after Khurasan's release of 15mm Motor Rifles and the range coming with Team Yankee I decided to focus my efforts in my preferred scale.

Ebay has a seller in Adelaide with reasonable prices, ordering from EU sellers or from Germany gets better pricws but with terrible shipping costs. Lucky to have my folks over in blighty right now and they offered to bring some back for me.

Going through the range I think I'll skip the town series as it's pretty generic style wise, but the suburban and country range has some great 80s looking houses.

Thanks for the link/tip.

Looks like a great resource.

Regular HO being 1/87th is very close.

Can't recall what scale TT is.

However, when you factor in that most of the modern 15mm figs are really now closer to 18mm in scale, they're just about perfect together. Even more so since in many cases railroad buildings are slightly smaller than in real life, so they don't take up too much room on people's train tables.

On the Auhagen site they have a section dedicated to each scale, and they say HO = 1:87, TT = 1:120 and HO/TT = 1:100.

Auhagen are the only guys who do this hybrid scale afaik.

British TT Scale is slightly different, being 1:101.6th scale and therefore manifestly compatible with 15mm figures. It's also known as 3mm Scale to railway modellers.

Reccomend any manufacturers? Don't know the whole mess related to model railway scales, but it's confusing.

It all boils down to actual railway gauge. British railway gauge was slightly smaller than the German equivalent, so the model trains and buildings were scaled slightly larger than their German equivalents when using exactly the same TT Gauge model tracks.

Triang were the main proponent of 3mm/TT Scale. Other companies have produced models in the scale, though they're still pretty rare. This online shop is a good guide: 3smr.co.uk

Roof slope works out for two reasons, height can give additional room (I did this in my outbuilding not having a attic) and with 2 formers it became a second floor. Water run off is another factor depending on roof material which may require or can work within a particular range. Asphalt shingles can be used down to a 4" slope in a 12" run. Tile needs a steeper pitch but don't know the minimum. Wood shingles need a steeper pitch because water must run off not having a seal between layers.
Hope this answered some of your roofing needs.