Dec 31 2008
How To - Design Railroad Operations
How To - Design Railroad Operations
Railroad operations are the reason for a railroad. Richard Schumacher presented a great article to the May, 1999 National Model Railroad Association (NMRA) National Convention. He suggests that the first way to improve and make your operations more realistic is to SLOW DOWN. He suggests laying down a yard stick (36 inches long) along a straight section of track on your railroad and practice running your train at a scale 5 miles per hour. A train moving at 5 mile per hour in N scale takes 65 seconds to travel 36 inches; in HO it take 36 seconds; and O scale takes 19 seconds.
Real trains do take their time travelling at speeds for dropping off and picking up trainloads of goods and merchandise. If your trains are running too fast the freight will shift inside the cars and be damaged. Coupling takes place at a crawling pace. Great care must be taken to not damage couplers and to set them so they either hold or release as needed. Long trains with lots of freight or passenger cars take a lot of power to pull them. It takes a lot of braking power to get them stopped too. In small layouts it would be rare to have a train running at “bullet train speeds”. The trains need to stop and pick up passengers and freight.
Have fun!
Trainguy
