After my recent article, I was contacted by a fellow TexLUG member who asked me about the scale I built my trains. He is interested in building a particular model and wanted a starting point, an asked me "do you build your trains 10 feet to 8 studs scale?" After all, I built my two TSRR locomotives at 8 wide scale, and as I said in my article they turned out to be about 10 feet wide. I replied and said no, that was just coincidence.
I scale all of my locomotives based on their driver size, and for my two locomotives I considered a large BBB driver, 4 studs in diameter, equal to a driver somewhere between 55" and 65". But then I got to thinking... just what is that? Well, 60", the average size of a driver I consider to be represented by a large BBB driver, happens to be 5 feet. 5 feet to 4 studs scale... wait a minute... Well what do you know, I really DO model at 10 feet to 8 studs scale.
Math can be fun!
For the curious, 10 feet to 8 studs scale mathematically ends up being 1:48 scale. Then again, my math skills seem to be a little off lately.
