EmpireBuilderDave posted:The challenge with Plasticville is they did not make it to 1:48 scale unfortunately. Some of their structures had some really nice detail but once you put figures or a vehicle in the structures look obviously small.
This isn't necessarily a disadvantage. Placed in the background, slightly-underscale structures, vehicles and roadways can be very useful to introduce a mild bit of forced perspective into a layout, producing the impression of increased expansiveness. It is not uncommon for folks to use HO (or even smaller) structures in the far background, such as on a "distant" mountainside. The trick is to be locally-consistent.
This scene is way in the background on a mountain -- I build everything at 3/4 of the proper scale:
