Building Dimensions

[viper_polo]

Hello, I've been looking at making a low relief model of Grangetown signal box to place on my small photoscene layout, by counting the bricks, I've worked it out to be 4.50 metres which I think sounds about right, but at 1/76th scale, is only 6 cm; which seems far too small when comparing it to my other resin buildings by Hornby and Bachmann.  

 

Am I missing something here? Or will it be that size in oo gauge and it just seems larger in real life? 

 

The building in question: 

[Pete the Elaner]

Are you sure your brick dimensions are correct? 4.5m does scale down to 6cm so that bit looks fine, but I agree that the building looks about twice that size.

I usually count bricks & cut that number out from my brick card.

[viper_polo]

Are you sure your brick dimensions are correct? 

 

They may be off, I googled and found that the average brick is 6.5cm tall, I have ignored the joins between the bricks, that's supposed to be 1cm on top but that's still only 5.2m tall. 

[Nick Holliday]

The normal assumption for UK brickwork is four horizontal courses being one foot high, which makes modelling in 4mm very easy, as each course would be the equivalent on 1mm on the model. Bricks are usually deemed to be 9 inches long, including the mortar thickness.

I must admit that when I first read this I thought it was referring to its length, not its height!

I'd be inclined to find out its overall length, using a mapping service, and, since the photo is reasonably square to the box, then, using something like PowerPoint to scale it to approximately the correct length, and then see how high it comes out, as the top panels are going to be difficult to estimate.

[whart57]

I'd say that 4.5 metres is well under. If you assume 2 metres is the height of the door then I would guess it is about 6 metres high. You could estimate the height of the entrance floor from the number of steps up to it, either use the steps in another kit to get the size or look up standard step heights on the internet. Then a typical door plus frame is 2 metres, and then you have a bit of headroom and that roof space

[viper_polo]

Yep, I just used your method Nick and it worked out at 6.8 metres, which seems a lot more reasonable

 

The length is almost exactly 20 metres so I imagine with the original roof it would be 6 metres approximately  

 

Thanks for your help, now time to get building!