Bungalows in scale

Plasticville | Plasticville | Walthers | Plasticville

To get a better idea of how small the Plasticville bungalows are here's a comparison with Walthers so-called Ranch Tract House. I say so-called because here that house would be called a bungalow, and a ranch house would be considerably bigger while remaining single-storey. 

I think the picture gives one a sense of why the Plasticville houses are too small, even when the 1/8" scaling is discounted - the built-in garage itself takes up about 1/3 of the footprint leaving little living space. Yes, comparing models from eras that are 65+ years apart is somewhat unfair, but I was wrestling with this scale issue earlier in the year while working on a side project.

I live in a neighbourhood built just after WWII. Smaller houses, many similar in size to the Walthers house, are still more-or-less the norm, although gentrification via monster houses is making inroads. However, the city is now changing its zoning bylaws to allow 4 and 6 storey multi-unit towers - some with ground floor retail - to be built cheek-to-jowl with the older houses. The city's promotional material about these changes has been quite deceptive in its communication of how big the towers will be. To help counter those perceptions I prepared some models and took some photos for a local group to clearly show the sizes involved. I had those Plasticville models on hand, but they were just too small, so I used the Walthers model, which better represents the size of the houses involved.

I built the Walthers kit box-stock. No painting, customizations, improvements, or changes of any kind. For my purposes, it looked fine as is, and speed of construction was important. Believe it or not, I built it in a single session of about 2 hours - something of a record for me :-)

It's a good kit, and I think with some painting could be made to look more realistic and settled. So, if you're looking for post-war houses for your layout, you might want to consider these.

Fie on the towers, if the city is going to change things, I recommend new construction be limited to the Deoralow :-)