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So, my minis are 30mm scale, slightly taller than your average 28mm mini. I ordered a bunch of die cast cars to use as terrain, I went with 1:32 sale.. they look OK next to the mini, it looks like the mini could realistically fit in the front seat and drive it. But, next to my buildings that are all laser cut wood and more like 28mm, the cars feel way too big. I remember reading somewhere that some people use matchbox cars, but I think the would look way too small.

Any common sizes out there in the middle that I should look for? What about O scale for model trains? I'm mostly looking for cheap models of older looking cars, up to like 1930 for pulp games.. but civilian type cars, not military.

1/42 is fairly common. It kind of works for minis on 25mm by 5mm tall bases

1/50 not so much, more for military vehicles. Some decent stuff in this scale though.

1/64 Matchbox is very common, but way too small for 30mm

1/72 stuff is tiny. Lots of diecast military in this scale.

Ebay sellers occasionally get the scale right...

30mm - 32mm models are closest to 1:48 model kits. I don't know about die cast cars as that's not really of interest to me, but I bought a couple of Tamiya plastic kits for use as scenery. Below is a tractor next to a Brother Vinni model that's advertised as 28mm, so on the low end. If you were to put him or a slightly larger model in the seat, it wouldn't look off.

A big advantage of 1:48 is that it is slightly larger than your 30mm - 32mm models, but doesn't have a base, and the small size difference helps mitigate the height gained by the base.

Edit: I don'T have any O-Scale kits myself, so I have never been able to see for myself, but supposedly it matches 1:48 scale, so that's what to look for in model train kits.

OK I'll go for 1:48 .. I just found this site selling lots of WWII models

https://www.megahobby.com/categories/military-models/1-48-armor.html

There's some cars and trucks mixed in. I was hoping to go with die cast so that I wouldn't have to spend a lot of time building and painting them, but I guess it's not that big of a deal since it's mostly gonna be solid colors and a little bit of light weathering.

I ordered a bunch of those 1:48 scale cars, I think they're a better fit. The first model I built was kinda crappy compared to GW's stuff. Most of the molded detail lines are gonna get filled in with primer cuz they're so shallow. But it's just a terrain piece so it should be fine. Here's a pic with the 1:48 car on the left and the 1:32 diecast car on the right. Maybe I can keep the 1:32 ones for Ogre cars

Yep Looks the part.

Shallow detail is just an inescapable truth of genuine scale models that try to replicate detail as close to scale as possible. I don't know what primer you use to expect that it will fill up detail, but in my experience that doesn't really happen. And I'm not known for going light on primer. I think you'll be fine.

yeah it's been a long time since I built any plastic models that weren't for games. That first car I built was a pretty crummy model, the parts didn't all fit together good. It was a russian company (I think) called Ace models. But good enough for a terrain piece. Next one I did was from Tamiya and that went together perfectly and looked much better, so I'm gonna stick to those.