# N with HO scenery



## Brinkleyfish (Jan 28, 2021)

I know this question will be laughed at but has anyone used HO scenery with a N scale train and would it be so wrong?


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## Dave NYC 1962 (Oct 17, 2020)

As a scientist I would say you have the right order of magnitude! 

Plus, it’s your hobby, so who cares but you?


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## MichaelE (Mar 7, 2018)

It is only 'wrong' because the scales do not match. Sometimes TT is used on HO layouts to force perspective and distance. When scales are mixed, it's usually a smaller scale for structures to make the background look farther away than it is. You could also make the train look farther away than it is by using bigger structures, but I don't think this would work well for a small 4x8 layout.

It's not something I would do. It's your railroad and what you say goes.


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## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

Brinkleyfish said:


> I know this question will be laughed at but has anyone used HO scenery with a N scale train and would it be so wrong?


Why would we laugh at the question? And more importantly, no one can tell you what is "right" on your own layout. If you want to do it, do so with our blessing. Depending on what, exactly, you're planning, it might look odd to some of us, but it can't be "wrong" if it's what you want to do. Just be Frank with yourself: if you don't feel it's right, then change it, and don't try to convince yourself that you will come to accept it.

Presumably, you already know that the size is going to be a mismatch. But there might be a good reason -- to suggest great distances, or to make a skyscraper twice as high as the model would be in the "correct" scale. A really tall tree might look better with a leftover scale model.


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## Stumpy (Mar 19, 2013)

Most HO scale trees are 3-4" tall. In HO that's roughly 20-30 scale feet. That's a short tree. In N those same trees would be roughly 40-50 feet tall. Not a problem.

HO buildings, on the other hand, would look a bit strange.


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## traction fan (Oct 5, 2014)

Brinkleyfish said:


> I know this question will be laughed at but has anyone used HO scenery with a N scale train and would it be so wrong?


Brinkleyfish;

I'm not sure what "HO scenery" would be. 
Generally speaking, scenery materials aren't all that scale-specific. A tree is a tree. If it's sold as an HO-scale tree, it's just a bigger tree in N-scale. Real trees, hills, grass, dirt, etc. come in more than one size. So within reason, an oversize item isn't always going to look out of place. When you get into man-made items like buildings, tunnel portals, bridges and the like, then the size difference is more obvious, but sometimes you can alter it to look more suitable for the scale your using.

For example, the big steel trestle in the photo below is on my N-scale railroad. The plate girders that stretch horizontally across the top are actual, "official" N-scale models. The box girders that make up the towers are really HO-scale, but altered.
Micro Engineering makes both the plate girder bridge kits at the top, and the "steel viaduct" kits under it. What they don't make is the laced box girder towers in N-scale. Their N-scale "steel viaduct" model lacks this steel lattice detail that I wanted. This particular kind of steel trestle was a common sight on the Milwaukee Road that I model.

So, I sanded down the HO-scale girder parts as much as I could get away with, and assembled them as "close enough" N-scale girders.
I think the trestle looks good.
If somebody else thinks " It ain't right. Those girders are too big."  Well then, baseball bats aren't always used just for playing baseball. now are they?  

The moral is; If you like it, It's OK.

Have Fun

Traction Fan 🙂


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## Dave NYC 1962 (Oct 17, 2020)

Another comment, every layout has ground variations that FAR exceed what you find in nature. Unless you are making a diorama, there is no way to be accurate with reality. In n scale, a 100’ mainline is 16,000 ft in reality, so roughly 3 miles. So, scale accuracy is overrated - whatever makes your layout look good. (Not to take anything away from people into that either.)


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## traction fan (Oct 5, 2014)

Dave NYC 1962 said:


> Another comment, every layout has ground variations that FAR exceed what you find in nature. Unless you are making a diorama, there is no way to be accurate with reality. In n scale, a 100’ mainline is 16,000 ft in reality, so roughly 3 miles. So, scale accuracy is overrated - whatever makes your layout look good. (Not to take anything away from people into that either.)


 Dave;

Do you mean the model mainline is 100 real feet long? That would translate to 16000 real feet in the real world. 100'x160= 16000' A model railroad with 100 real feet of mainline would be a pretty big model railroad. Mine crosses most of my garage three times, and has less than 50 real feet of mainline. Numbers aside, your basic premise is all too true. We just don't have the room build a scale model of even a tiny fraction of the mileage of a real life short line, much less a transcontinental. We have to model only the bits that most interest us, and leave out a lot of other trackage. I model a condensed version of the Milwaukee Road in the immediate Seattle area in N-scale. I once saw an interesting HO-scale layout that captured the feel of the Milwaukee's main line from Seattle, all the way to Milwaukee. Granted the guy had a basement to play in, but he had just modeled vignettes of one feature in Seattle, another in Montana, another in Illinois, and another in Wisconsin, leaving out hundreds of miles in between. Given the seemingly ridiculous scope of his representation, I was amazed at how effective the illusion was. 


Traction Fan 🙂


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## Old_Hobo (Feb 20, 2014)

I’m of the opinion that “scenery” is all the natural stuff.....rocks, grass, flowers, trees, rivers, lakes, mountains, etc....and those can be interchangeable in most scales, as there are taller and shorter trees, bigger and smaller lakes, etc, in real life, so why not?

Now, structures (buildings, bridges, even the track itself), well, that’s another thing....


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## cv_acr (Oct 28, 2011)

I'm with the rest here - there's no such thing as "HO scenery" - just scenery. Scenery techniques translate pretty well across scales.

A 20' tree looks a lot like a 50' tree looks a lot like a 100' tree - just "scaled up". 

A 4" model tree would be a pretty tall tree in N scale, a medium size tree in HO scale and barely a sapling in O scale.

The only place where something might make a bit of a difference would be crushed "rock" and ballast - average real-life size of the rocks in ballast is about 3 inches. You want to use an appropriately coarse/fine grade of ballast for the scale you're using, or your N scale ballast will look like boulders, or your O scale ballast like fine gravel.

But a large tree, or bush, or stream, or natural rock looks a lot like a smaller version of the same thing.


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## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

cv_acr said:


> I'm with the rest here - there's no such thing as "HO scenery" - just scenery. Scenery techniques translate pretty well across scales.
> 
> A 20' tree looks a lot like a 50' tree looks a lot like a 100' tree - just "scaled up".
> 
> ...


That's true, although fieldstone walls and retaining walls are in the same category-- beyond a certain size, you lose realism. This is something near and dear to my heart, because there are a lot of these in New England (the rock is the state flower of Connecticut), and I have hand laid ones on my layout.


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## Old_Hobo (Feb 20, 2014)

I would call the stone wall a structure, not scenery, and therefore needs to follow the scale.....


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