Every layout has at least a few vehicles on it, and from the earliest days of the 20th century in the United States, license plates have been issued to such vehicles, from almost the beginning by individual states. To me, that means that vehicles on my layout should not only have license plates, but the correct ones for the year I model, 1953. I’ve written about this before (see, for example: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/11/vehicle-license-plates-in-ho-scale.html ).
In the post just cited, I gave links to the history of California license plates (and mentioned that every state appears to have such history on line somewhere). And in a subsequent post, I showed the prototype license plate which was newly issued by California in 1951 (here’s the post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2022/12/era-and-locale.html ). This original license plate hangs in my layout room and I often point it out to visitors.
But that isn’t the entire story. In that era, California, like most states, only issued new metal plates every several years, and during the years in between, issued something to reflect current registration for that year. In California’s case, it was a little metal corner tag, attached with the bolt in the lower right corner of the full license plate. This covered the year of the underlying plate, “51” in the example above, with the current year, and naturally in a contrasting color each year. For 1953, it was white, and I have an original one of these also.
For modeling purposes, one could of course start with real metal license plates and digitize them to construct HO scale images; it is easier to use the digital images from the on-line history sites. That is what I have done, as described in the post linked in the second paragraph at the top of the present post. Here’s an example of the kind of image I reduce to HO scale and print out on paper with a copy shop’s high-resolution printer:
The paper license plates are cut out and attached to vehicles, front and back, with canopy glue. So wherever a vehicle may be on my layout, as in the example below, which is on Chamisal Road in my layout town of Shumala, passing the Dolphin & Anchor tavern, it has the correct license.
I should also mention that California had a separate series of license plates for
trucks, both light and heavy trucks (and they still do today), which were similar but with different numbering. I’ve written
about model truck licenses previously: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/12/vehicle-license-plates-trucks.html .
I continue to occasionally acquire a new vehicle for my 1953 layout, and before it appears on the layout, it will definitely acquire a correct license plate. It’s a small detail, but one that contributes to identifying the layout’s era.
Tony Thompson
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