[FUNGUS]

When planning a timetable to use on my temporary set up Id like to run the trains at scale speed, with this in mind I assume that scale speed=scale time
Ive done a search on line and on this forum regarding scale time and have found nothing of use. I assume (perhaps wrongly) that 1 hour in oo gauge equates to 1/76 of an hour, but trying to do the math makes my head hurt!
Can anyone help?

 

[Guest]

Hiya

Time doesnt scale.

If you had a scale mile of track and it took your model an actual hour to travel along it it would be doing 1 scale mile an hour.

If your model covered a real mile in an hour it would be travelling 76.2 scale miles per hour.

Scale time is a myth invented to explain things like coupling hooks swinging too fast. This is not due to time being wrong and due to gravity being 76.2 (cubed) too strong!

Simple answer is your model timetable and your real one should be identical matches.

HTH

Jim

 

[FUNGUS]

Thanks Jim,
I read somewhere that time is relative!
My Hornby elite dcc controller has the function to speed the clock up by upto x10, which I will now ignore!!!!!
Many thanks
Steve
PS just took a look at your website..........WOW!

 

[marshlander]

yup, scale time is a problem- scale speed is fairly easy to work out & I guess from your post that you've seen a site where this is presented for OO scale. So trains take the right time to get from A to B, although compression of track layouts is then a problem. However, marshalling takes up most of our time, and usually there's one of us doing it rather than shunters all over the layout! I think John Allison has written about the need to leave pauses during shunting etc for the locomen to change to reverse gear/ shunters to couple etc... I'm sure there are those who can do this, but a sequence timetable offers a more leisurely relaxation imho!
I do have a marker length of track for visitors to drive to speed limits (way above what the real railway would have on the curves!) but, watching trains pass, think that it appears that they all are travelling too slowly. Like scale colour, all in the eye of the beholder.. perhaps more important to be able to tell apart the various classes of train?

 

[Richard Johnson]

*** I thnk it a personal perspective thing... an individual choice on how you prefer to run your layout.

for example on my large S&C layout it was originally designed to be able to run an entire days timetable in the early 1930's - however I had no intention of it taking a full day, as although the running lines were huge by model standards they were still many scale miles short of the line I was modelling which was between Settle and Blea Moor! In otherwords, I would have run at scale speed and worked to the timetable sequence but not the real world clock.

So...I would tend to take Jims approach but a more "operations minded" layout may ignore many issues and simply create a unique working timetable for the layout operators to use that compressed time - this is a common approach in US modelling where a team of operators will be allocated tasks and drive/switch/operate to a fast clock while trying to maintain prototype practice.

Fast clocks are commonly used for intensely works "operator oriented layouts" - as is a "compressed scale mile" when assuming distance between cities - I've often seen "compressed scale miles" referred to as "Smiles" in US articles.

Richard.

 

[SRman]

I agree, time doesn't scale but you could use a sped up clock for your timetable. Alternatively you could run a sequence rather than a timetable. Or you could do what one of our local modellers does; run a timetable, but with a clock that has no mechanism at all; when the necessary movements have been completed said friend then moves the hands on the clock to the next timetabled setting!

 

[Guest]

Hiya

indeed, its not about speeding the clock up but more about missing the gaps out! A model railway where a loco and train arrives once every hour would be dull, dull, dull! However trying to run round, couple up and allow time for passengers to get on/off 76.2 faster than reality would just look bizzare!

I have the oppostite problem, even at actual time and a team of about 10 operators I cant keep up with the intensity of movements at New Street.

Cheers

Jim

 

[34C]

I am with Jim's approach, which I think of as 'elastitime'. A schedule is worked sequentially with the movements in real time, linearly scaled train speed on the track, activity like shunting moves take as long as they take before the next conflicting movement is permitted. Conversely 'dead time' with no movements is mostly 'lost', and the next movement in sequence commences.

One of the aspects that was a real discovery for me, was how fast the real (steam worked) railway actually accomplished some fairly complex moves. To say that the work was done briskly both in signalling and loco handling was the least of it. Pictures of suburban stock with stove-in ends are not that hard to find, and when you work out the speeds at which ECS moves were accomplished to get a train turned round from the up relief platform across the up and down through, and down relief lines, and then reversed into the down bay for departure; the occasional braking misjudgement and 'firm contact' with the stops is easily explained. Particularly on a dark nght with a wet and greasy rail.

 

[PeterPug]

Interesting comment about scale colour, Marshlander (hope I spelt it right). I wonder if it is colour and or strength strength of the light that can cause too much of a toy-like effect. It's interesting that a very low-powered bulb can light up such a large 'scale area'.

 

[Guest]

Hiya

Colour needs to be lighter as it gets smaller. If you were to take a can of rail blue as used by BR and paint a 4mm scale model loco with it, despite it being the exact colour the model would appear almost black by comparrison. Its more to do with distance, your model loco might be a hundred feet away if it were a prototype. As objects get further away their colour gets lighter and bluer. Reds are the fist to go.

Cheers

Jim

 

[7113]

QUOTE (jim s-w @ 13 Jan 2009, 17:13) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Colour needs to be lighter as it gets smaller. If you were to take a can of rail blue as used by BR and paint a 4mm scale model loco with it, despite it being the exact colour the model would appear almost black by comparrison.

That's also why any model painted in high gloss looks "toylike", and why I prefer satin finishes which tend to absorb rather than reflect light.

Regards

 

[PeterPug]

Jim, BRITHO
many thanks. I wonder, though, how much allowance is made for this by RTR manudfacturers such as Bachman and Hornby. I am contemplating starting this 'hobby' many years after my 2nd hand Tri-ang Princess Elizabeth (long since departed, heaven alone knows where it went), and would hate to order, if the economic situation ever improves, loads of toy-like stuff. Living here, in France, it would all need to be mail-order and I'm not keen to buy a 'pig in a poke'.

Regards
Peter(Pug)

 

[34C]

The mail order retailers are pretty good about posting their own pictures of items in stock. Hattons and Rails of Sheffield generally have useable images so you can get a good idea. While UK RTR is not yet as exquisite as the best continental European productions, the more recent models are light years better than the ancient Triang Princess of fond memory. Just click on the images to enlarge. http://railsofsheffield.com/br-black-late-...3-JJJA9591.aspx

Then of course there are websites like this one, click on 'reviews' in the header bar for some truly unbiased and illustrated evaluations.

 

[PeterPug]

Many thanks, 34C
I have to admit I 've been looking at Hattons and a number of other sites, and it's the photographs that have whetted my appetite. The tests on Model Rail Forum are what brought me to the site in the first place, as there was a link to one of them from a French site - and having got here I decided to stay - there is so much good information. Just a question of what era - probably early 50's so that I can have things like Riley Pathfinders and Morris Commercials to go with blood and custard coaches. The comments here on scale colour got me thinking......

 

[Lancashire Fusilier]

Back to scale time again - I belief that the adaption of a fast clock with ajustable scaling up of "operations time" is adaptable to the layout you have and if a timetable is to be followed then some form of "time acceleration" will be necessary unless the layout represents a) total fidelity with the prototype with respect to distances and

has significant numbers of movements or operations to keep things interesting. As such there is no one size fits all application as refleected in the posts above.

It would appear from review of the US modelling press that this is an area well matured by the US modelling crew but perhaps less shared amongst the UK outline modellers represented heavily on this and other UK based forums.