Time for another installment of my occasional “Working in HOSO” series, wherein I discuss the pleasure and the pain of mixing 3 scales of items on a slot track diorama and making it work…or not.
Here in this overview photo you can see “two sides of the tracks” and, as in so many other neighborhoods, things are different across that track. On one side is the paddock, the most exciting sector of the track. Across the asphalt and the guard rails and retaining fences is an industrial area restricted to track employees and vendors. This area includes the fuel depo where 2 vendors, BP and Shell, unload their wares. The scale of the trucks is unknown but it is surely nowhere near the 1:64 commonly held as the scale for Matchbox and Hot Wheels, because both vehicles (there is one of each of those brands) were simply shrunk to fit in with the rest of their respective product lines without consideration of the scale of a truck in comparison to a car. This is one of the principal reasons why virtually all 1:64 scale cars are still held by most serious modelers to be “toys” rather than “scale models.”
The gas tanks, by contrast, are a known scale: 1:87, best known as HO, the most popular scale for model railroads in the USA. This is no surprise since the gas tanks are Bachmann diorama pieces.
So then, what do? Well, I had batch of HO scale peeps from a project I never finished about a year ago, and having been ordered through one of my favorite vendors in Canada, they are of high quality and detail. So I decided to put those next to the trucks, and I thought they looked good enough that soon I was adding more pieces. This area is now under construction as evidence by the bulldozer and the big Mac quarry truck, each with another figure. The figure by the truck is HO, but the fatigued driver of the bulldozer is larger; he is closer to 1:64 but a little smaller (1:75, perhaps?) and, considering his perch, looks pretty good in comparison to the others.
That is, of course, as long as you don’t look too close; if you compare this scene to one the across the tracks, the difference becomes obvious. However, seen on its own, does it look out of scale?
And yet, even across the street at the paddock there’s some “creativity” going on with scale, as some of the slightly smaller figures stand near some of the slightly smaller cars in areas of the background, while the bigger ones are standing next to the bigger cars taking center stage in the parking area. Here the difference between the scales is significantly less, especially since all these items were sold by their prospective makers as 1:64 scale, but you never take that as gospel: there’s always a bit of “eyeballing the scene” and moving things around to get the right look.
Obviously this area of the diorama is still pretty barren and needs work, and that work is coming (and believe me I’ll torment y’all with it every step of the way!). But you have to start somewhere, and the desire to work some trucks from my sprawling die-cast collection into the scenery is the “mother of invention” here. I expect that once some ground cover and landscaping starts going in, it will work even better.
Well, I hope so, anyway!
You know, I think you are making it work though. I know it is hard and I’ve struggled with getting the O Scale items. I do think you are making it work and from the pictures, it does look good. With some of the items, the focus, for me, tends to go to the item itself and differences in sizes don’t appear as obvious. I like how your placing them. I think once you get going on some scenery, you will enjoy it and I’ve found even just a few things really makes a difference! Great Job!!!