Time and distance

One of the difficulties model railways have is in dealing with time and distance.

Layouts that want an operational focus will have to come to terms with the fact that the scale distance between towns on the model railroad can in no way approximate the prototype. We already seek to compress towns and yards to fit within our defined model railroad space as best we can. Trying to actually compress real distance between towns is even more difficult due to limitations on model railroad space.

And when the distance between towns is relatively short on our model railroads, the amount of time a train takes between those towns is also relatively short.

For the most part we get by with using fast clocks. Fast clocks seek to reduce "real" time to model time so that we can have some useful timetable operation. It's no good using real time when the time it takes for your train to travel between Town A and Town B is ten seconds! By using a fast clock we can pretend that the train took ten minutes or forty minutes or whatever between towns.

The time factor, even with a fast clock, also faces the problem that it is often the case that as the head of the train arrives at Town B, its tail is just leaving Town A! While the distance between towns will depend on overall layout size, I have operated very large model railroads in the US where this is still a problem.

In essence, if we want to try and replicate time and distance on the model railroad based on the prototype, it is damned hard to do well. This leads to compromise and ingenious proxies (like the fast clock) to help us manage as best we can.

However, I am thinking of an alternative solution. I haven't calculated the exact times to use just yet, so please just stay with me at the conceptual level at this stage!

On my proposed US layout, one option for my layout plan is to have a key junction station as the starting point, a large station and yard in the middle of the layout footprint for interchange, and then continue along the branch to another junction station for the remainder (including modelling a couple of the intermediate towns here).

In this scenario, the first "half" of the layout will be the first station and the middle station with no modelled towns/yards in between. I am therefore skipping 2 intermediate towns from the prototype because I don't have the space and they aren't operationally interesting enough to warrant inclusion on this part of the layout. What this means is that I would have two stations close to each other on the layout but on the prototype they are actually 60 miles (97km) apart. Using a fast clock in this scenario won't really work.

There is a peninsula between the two towns and I want to enclose this curved section in a shadow box. It is not considered part of "the railway". It won't be scenicked and the top of the box will be used by the dispatcher for his paperwork. As such, this curved section on the model railway does not really exist! This section will also need to be long enough (and hidden) to hold a complete train so train length becomes an issue too.

My idea is to hold the train in this "hidden" section while I run a real time/scale time sequence that will represent the time and distance between the two major towns I am modelling on the layout, but representing the 60 real miles apart on the prototype.

The travel of my model train (distance and time) will be represented by four lights, each representing the four towns on this section of the prototype. The first light goes on when the train leaves the first modelled station and yard (the junction - Town A). The train enters the curved shadow box around the peninsula and stops, being now fully enclosed and not visible at either end. A second light now comes on and the first light goes out. The second light indicates that the train has "arrived" at the second (unmodelled) station. After (say) thirty real seconds, the second light goes off and a third light goes on, representing the next unmodelled town. After another thirty seconds, the third light goes out and the fourth light comes on to indicate that the train is now (under power) entering the fourth town which is the mid-town on the layout that is actually modelled. We have now used a proxy for the time and distance between two modelled towns, including the two unmodelled intermediate towns.

I appreciate the fact that we will have the train operator/s waiting for over a real 60 seconds to get his/her train from Town A to Town D. And most of this real time is actually just waiting for some lights to go on and off before moving the train into the next station and yard on the model railroad. I figure that if I had the space and had actually modelled those two small intermediate towns, then the real time factor of the train moving between Town A and Town D would be the same or more. So pretending to run the train through those unmodelled intermediate towns shouldn't be much of a strain.

By holding up the train off-stage between modelled stations (or in the space-time warp I would prefer to call it), I am using a proxy for the time and distance between two towns, some 60 real miles apart on the prototype.

Comments welcome....

The 2009 NMRA Convention in Hartford, USA

I am a National Model Railroad Association (NMRA) member. When I was living in Sydney I'd attend the monthly layout visits when I could and found them always interesting events. Now in Canberra, I have made a couple of layout visits but still to get into a more regular routine.

One of our Canberra mob, John P., is heading off to the US at the end of this week to attend the annual NMRA Convention being held this year in Hartford, Connecticut. The convention begins on July 5th.

It's likely that several Australians will be making the trip to the US to go to the Convention in Harford, CT. The clinics and layout tours look terrific.

My hope is to go to the 2010 NMRA Convention in Milwaukee. The 2010 convention will be the 75th anniversary of the NMRA so it promises to be extra special. And, Milwaukee is (sort of) close enough to my favourite US prototype railroads, the Soo and the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern.

In the meantime, I hope John and the other Aussies have a great time in Connecticut and bring back lots of good ideas and tips for the rest of us!

Another fantastic layout

It would be remiss of me not to mention another fantastic layout I really admire. That layout is the US prototype layout of Gerry Hopkins - the Great Northern (Great Falls Division). Gerry Hopkins is a NMRA Master Modeller and he is also one of the key drivers behind the NMRA Australasian Region. I always take a great deal of inspiration from this layout, which is why I want to flag Gerry's layout as one of my favourites.

I mention it now despite the fact that Gerry doesn't write a model railway blog (to the best of my knowledge) and my last post specifically referred to Blogger bloggers. Having visited Gerry's layout three or four times over the past few years as part of a NMRA monthly layout tour, I am always impressed by the operational and scenic effect of the layout. I also love the track plan. You can tell I am a big fan of interesting track plans that have a strong preference for prototypical operations.

I will, no doubt, mention and discuss a range of layouts that have had an impact on me in some shape or form over the years. Moreover, I am always looking for new things and working through ideas on layouts I see for the first time, or ones that I have even seen before. And of course, there are those layouts I have only heard about through friends, or seen via model railway magazines and the internet.

And speaking of model railway magazines, I have three that have hit my reading shelf in the past week to finish off reading. Something for the next blog post...