Railway modellers know 1:87 as H0, and that is where these tiny machines belong. A motorcycle at this scale is around two centimetres long, so it works as populated detail: a sidecar outfit on a station forecourt, a bike in a trackside yard or a dispatch rider in a wartime scene. An East German two-stroke with a sidecar is a typical subject. Building one is an evening's work, but it needs tweezers and a steady hand.
Parts this small are best painted on the sprue and cut free at the last moment. The scale matches railway models exactly, which is where most of these pieces end up. For a rider-and-machine scene with figures you can actually paint faces on, go up to 1:32 and 1:35 motorcycle kits, where the same idea works at three times the size. The complete choice of machines across all scales is in motorcycle model kits.
