Standards of actual sizes

[WillSowka]

Hey guys THANKS for all the suggestions I really appreciate all your replies. John T, I think you hit the nail on the head with.........." this is my Railroad so I'll use what I can find for actual size of structures and railside items and guesstimate what looks correct to me of those I can't find "........Thanks again guys......Bill S.

[cacole]

I think anyone, whether a NMRA member or not, can purchase their data CD -- it's just that non-members have to pony up a lot more money for it.

I have one that I purchased as a NMRA member and have found it to be near worthless because I have the printed copies of everything and can find things a lot quicker that way than trying to wade through the CD, which has a poorly designed search function and poorly scanned copies of the data sheets. Many of them are illegible on the CD because even the printed copies I have seem to be 10th or 20th generation Xerox copies that are blurry and streaked.

[tatans]

About the only that was standardized was track and couplers and that was because other railroads were using others track, I'm sure that almost all other construction was different with each individual railway, although each railway had it's own standards, so a control tower or fence construction in Fargo, N.D. will not be the same as in Cucamonga, CA.

[JohnT14808]

Or....since this YOUR railroad, peruse what you can find, then make up your own rules and regs; specifications and procedures. It all depends on what you are modeling and how prototypical you feel you have to be. I like realistic as opposed to prototypical, but some may say that they are the same.

[BR60103]

See if your chosen railroad has a Historical Society or SIG (Special Interest Group). These are most likely to have the information you want.

[IRONROOSTER]

Then NMRA has a data book on cd available to members only.

Also there is Kalmbach's book Trackside Scenes http://store.yahoo.net/kalmbachcatalog/12234.html that might be of interest.

From time to time books covering specific railroads are published. Check with some of the railraod book dealers.

Enjoy
Paul

[Anonymous]

Some of the Railroads, like the Pennsy, went to great lenghts to detail the engineering of everything on the system down to the color and dimensions of the outhouse seat. Much of this has been preserved, but a ton of it has been sent to the dump or discarded when the particular item was built, and or after it was scrapped. The historical societies of the various entities both commercial and public have some of this information on file, but there is so much of it and some so trivial that it is buried and thus virtually lost forever. That is until you unearth the particular document and share it with others. The long and short of this is that research does not come in handy shake the box packages. The good news is that the internet is beginning to make more and more of the important and the trivial "searchable", but there is a lot of wading needed to get the exact piece of information that you are looking for.
Good luck in the quest ,and enjoy the journey.
Will ... do I want to take the path to the right or perhaps the one to the left. It may make all the difference.

[johncolley]

Go to the site: nmra.org and check out all the standards and reccommended practices sheets you can download and print. Many are railroad standards reprints for details such as parallel tracks, clearances for buildings, poles, etc. Happy hunting!

[WillSowka]

Many Industries have Standards /Code books, is there such a manual or reference guide for actual size of TRACKSIDE structuresand items that would be found on or near a railroad that one could scale down to the size of the scale modeling.There is so much research that has to be done to acquire such information that is very time consuming it woud be great if there was a source for this information without having to go to a library. Does anyone out there have any references that I could use so I don't have to climb a telephone pole with a tape measure to get the size or measure the distance between two railroad tracks for proper clearance?