Hey guys...just wondering if a scale 40' is too high for a standard light pole. There is a store on eBay selling lights cheap, but he/they are marketing these lamps as HO/N. I think most light poles top out in the high 20's, but the cost of these lights beats anything I have seen. I am not looking at street lights, but rather typical parking lot and industrial yard lights.
Is 40 feet too high?
Industrial yard lights are
Industrial yard lights are sometimes pretty high, but 40 feet seems a lot. But then again, I think the overhead lights in the freight yard downtown are probably about that tall... The ones at wally world are tall but they don't have their lights on long arms...
If you think they're a good deal get them, I'm sure you could shorten them with a little noodling. What do the heads look like?
Is 40 feet too high?
Ron
My few cents:
IMHO, the real issue is not are they too high, but are they suitable for your own individual requirements?
I ran into this problem when building a major yard on my 'Home' layout (albeit in 1:148 rather than 1:160). I needed yard lights, and initially had reservations about installing yard poles (actually modified bamboo skewers) that were 40 foot tall (seriously!) into the mix.
By experimenting, I found that as the trees surrounding the yard were 60ft tall, and the Locomotives/Rolling stock scaled-out at 14ft above rail-height, the poles I used, despite their supposedly excessive scale height actually looked right for the situation - and still do, five years on.
I also found that in reality 40 feet is not particularly tall - it only soundsas if it is, and that when surrounded by things that are even taller than it is, the measurement shrinks quite a lot, and very quickly.
As I said, this is my experience - and to see if in fact these poles would in fact be suitable for your purposes, I would suggest that you simply cut a piece of scrap strip-type wood to length, (to represent a 40-foot tall pole) put it in the 'ground' on your layout and run/place your rolling stocK past it.
If you think it 'fits in' buy the lamps, if not, you've lost nothing, and learnt a bit about how things relate to each other size and height-wise.
Hope this helps.
Komata
"TVR - serving the Northern Taranaki . . . "
You know, Komata, I had
You know, Komata, I had completely forgotten about some of the trees I have. They are Woodland Scenic trees, and they run in N scale to be in the 70-95-foot height, which if I placed any near these poles would indeed make them look much smaller than they scale out to be.
See, that is why I put questions like these on here, cuz there is always someone who brings up something I never knew or did but forgot about. Thanks for your two cents....it is worth much more than two pennies.
Prototype reference for light Pole.
The following link http://www.dot.state.oh.us/traffic/Publication%20Manuals/scds/SCDs.htm is to the Ohio Department of Transportation web site. Look at the HL-10.11 PDF file for actual dimensions of very similar lights. The 40 foot height falls right in the middle of the range.
Joined: 2007-02-07