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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by ACL Fan Questions to consider: How do you deal with railroad crossings? If the train is coming, the cars have to stop, but in a conveyor-belt system ALL the cars would stop, everywhere. Not realistic. How do you deal with intersections? Again, if one direction has a red light, ALL the cars on that road would stop, not just the ones at the light. No traffic light means endless collisions. How do you deal with the wear from running those cars on the roadway surface? It would take long before friction created an unrealistic scrape if a magnet touched the road; not a problem if the wheels roll and support the cars. Would it not be distracting for just some of the cars to move while others on un-powered roadways sat still? Just some idears. [/quote] Very good points. Granted, this idea of mine is far from perfect. Otherwise I guess many folks would be doing it and we would probably have commercially-available vehicle systems. I have considered most of the problems you mentioned. I wasn't planning on having movement everywhere. Probably only certain scenes in strategic locations on the layout (like a highway overpass, etc). I probably would have to avoid movement in traffic areas or use a system other than magnets..don't ask me what, though! [:D] Faller's system actually has working intersection if I'm not mistaken.. but once again nothing for N scale and very expensive. But even with other systems like the wire / slit-in-the-road, you'd have the same problems. Absent some kind of super high-tech commercially-available nanotechnology that is probably 20 years away, I'm not sure how to make the cars move like the real things!! [8D] True that all the cars moving at the same speed all the time seems unrealistic. Don't know how to fix that prob, either... It's basically the same problem as the intersection/downtown dilemma--making a lot of different cars move at different speeds (including stop) and different directions without colliding. I also considered the wear problem. I was thinking that with the proper weathering *maybe* this could be alleviated somewhat. You're right though... not much of a trade off for not cutting a slice in the roads when you're going to end up with an ugly black line down the middle anyway. And while HO vehicles can accomodate moving axles/wheels, I don't know that it would be feasible in N. I heard about someone else who used a system where essentially the cars where stationary and the whole road moved (the road was basically a conveyor belt). However this seems even less realistic to me! [:)] Thanks for the ideas so far and let's please keep them coming. Surely there has to be a way!! If they can put a man on the moon...
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