SCALE.

WHAT SCALE IS MY ARMY?

I thought it useful to outline the size scale of my army, its soldiers and vehicles.

The basic starting point is the screw soldier. I use ½ inch number 6 screws which are 12½mm long. Assuming a living soldier is around 6 feet or 1.8m  tall that gives a scale of 2mm to the foot or 300mm. That makes a scale of 1/150th by my calculation, give or take a bit, which is the equivalent of N gauge.

I have to admit here that some of the actual sizes of vehicles/horses I use are not quite right but I also take the view that it is just as important that things  look right and are practical as well as being as close as possible to the right scale size.

With that in mind my horses are about 16-17mm high at the top of the head but only 10-11mm at the withers which gives a height of 5½ feet which is 16 hands which is a good size for Cavalry and generous for draught horses. They are  19-20mm long which gives a scale size of 10 feet long. According to the British Army Field Manual of 1914 a horse is 9 feet long so clearly I feed my horses too much !!!!!! However the point is that my horses are close enough to scale.

 As for vehicles, my  GS wagons ( and all other four wheeled vehicles ) are 15mm wide and 30mm long. That gives 15 feet in length and  and 7½ feet in width. According to the book Horse Drawn Transport of the British Army a  mark X GS wagon was 13½ feet long and 6¼ feet wide so I am a little oversized.  My various utility trailers are 15mm square which is 7½ feet each way. The British limbered wagon , on which my trailers are loosely based , was  6¼ feet by 5¼ feet so again I am a bit oversized. The drawing pins I use for wheels are 10mm across which is 5 feet and a British mark X GS wagon had wheels of 4 feet 8 inches in diameter so close there.

I guess the overall message is that some of my models are not precisely to scale but are close enough for me. Finally I apologise for the jumping around in respect of using imperial and metric sizes, it's the product of a certain age which makes me use imperial measures for large sizes and metric for small , which I also do in my woodworking hobby.

UPDATE.

I have just completed and issued the final batch of GS wagons to my three armies. Although there remain a large number of soldier upgrades to finish this means the equipment of the armies is complete. This event caused me to do some quick calculations which I will now share with readers as they may be of interest.

My armies now have about 1,320 GS wagons in total. At a length of 65mm each, including horses, placed end to end, they would stretch a distance of 86 metres or 288 feet in old money.

 In addition my armies now have 279 ammunition wagons, 738 limbers, and 480 other wagons including 96 ambulances and 72 forge wagons. There are also 630 heavy trailers and 1,930 light trailers of various sorts including over 200 field kitchens and over 200 water trailers. Lastly there are 590 guns of all types. 

At the present moment i have a total of just under 53,000 soldiers. The authorised strength of the three armies is a little under 60,000.  In a post some time ago I mentioned that I had calculated that including soldiers marching three abreast and with vehicles in single file, the whole army on the march would stretch some one and a half kilometres.

By the end of this year, once I have built the new display unit, I will commence construction of the fourth army which will lead to a new target strength of a little over 80,000 with vehicle numbers increasing in proportion.

An interesting statistic that I have recently calculated.  My current army, with soldiers marching three abreast and with vehicles in single file and no gaps between units, would occupy just over 1.2 kilometres of road !!!!!!! That is actual road, not scale road  !!!!!!!!!