I did say that I would update my "It's A Small World After All" series when I had new photos or better information. What got me re-thinking this was finding my Marx HO scale passenger shelter out in The Cave photo graphing it and then pulling some figures and buildings out for a few extra photos. After taking these shots it occurred to me that while these buildings were small, they were too small to be HO scale. While Marx did include them on it's pre-fab HO scale layout train boards I forgot to keep in mind that Marx was, first and foremost, a toy company. Their designers didn't get all wrapped around the axle over minor things like 'scale fidelity'. That was for model making companies, not Marx. And it threw me off. Here I am trying to think in terms of scale accuracy when I should have known better.
Okay, first of all, the Marx figures included in the Guid-A-Traffic and Paint-a-Village sets from 1952 are in fact HO-scale - or pretty damn close considering when they were made.
Here's a comparison shot using a Preiser HO scale figure set (which I think we can all agree are pretty darn accurate) alongside a Marx figure from 1952. For that time period Marx did a good job and this is my reference for determining Marx HO scale pieces.
The Guid-A-Traffic set included an oversized auto - more appropriate for O-scale. Here we see the car with an O-scale figure and a Marx HO-scale figure
Next we have some of the buildings included in the Guid-A-Traffic and Paint-A-Village sets photographed with the Marx figures. As you can see, the buildings are woefully undersized! If they can have a scale attributed to them, what might it be? 'N' perhaps? They look to be too big for N-scale so I'm thinking these are nothing more than Marx 'toy-scale'. But if you're into the simplicity of Marx toys and enjoy running Marx HO-scale trains then these pieces will be just fine for your efforts!! You simply cannot read too much into this stuff and when all is said-&-done your only option is to - Enjoy! Opa Fritz
No comments:
Post a Comment