"Scale" Speed

[Anonymous]

I realize that time cannot be scaled to model railroading, but can someone offer an idea of a "realistic" train speed (feet / minute) of an HO freight or passenger train?

[Don Gibson]

HO - one foot per second is roughly 60 MPH. Freight's run at 50 MPH.

[brothaslide]

I went to visit a local club last week. They always make it a point to operate at scale speed. They run the entire main line at a scale 25 mph - boring! On the other hand, the local O scale 3 rail club runs em' at 150 mph non stop - too fast!

[Roadtrp]

N scale - 33 inches in 5 seconds is 60MPH.

The formula is inches in 5 seconds, times 12, times 60, times 160, divided by 12, divided by 5,280. You can get rid of the "times 12" and the "divided by 12" since they offset each other, but leaving them in there helps me remember what the formula is actually doing.

[NZRMac]

Here's a cool calculator

http://www.mcr5.org/articals/speed.htm

Ken.

[AntonioFP45]

QUOTE: Originally posted by brothaslide

I went to visit a local club last week. They always make it a point to operate at scale speed. They run the entire main line at a scale 25 mph - boring!

Good Goobly! The entire main line? I agree with you there!

I can see if it's a loaded "drag freight" on a grade, but I've seen prototype intermodals and phosphate trains clipping by at 65 m.p.h! I guess the club you visited doesn't operate passenger trains. 25 m.p.h max for everything? I'd get bored quickly!

I enjoy the challenge of getting a train up to speed and realistically slowing and stopping at the right spot without jolting my loads, passengers, or locomotive crew.

At the Suncoast Model Railroader's Club, which I visited, the speeds are realistic and yet varied just as with prototypes. Passenger trains were running about 70 m.p.h max. . Long frieghts 40 to 50 mph, and locomotives in the yards 5 to 10 m.p.h. These are "my" approximations, but I've gotten pretty good at visually estimating train speeds in HO scale. These guys have fun and keep it realistic.

[;)]

[johncolley]

HO scale is 1/87. 60 mph=88ft/sec which is close enough, eh? So the following for operations, find a couple of marks or objects that are a foot apart:
12" in 1 sec =60 mph, 2 sec=30 mph, 3 sec=20 mph, 4 sec= 15mph, 5 sec= 12 mph, 6 sec= 10mph. good enough for eyeball operations.
A lot of secondary lines ran around 35mph, street running was usually limited to 10-15mph and some towns required bell ringing when street running, also in some yards. Long bridges were also speed restricted, a holdover from the steam era driver pounding, to prevent harmonic buildup of oscillationsthat could accumulate to catastrophic failure of the bridge.

[Anonymous]

Thank you!

Jeff

[AntonioFP45]

Jeff,

One easy thing to do if you're like to "eyeball" train speeds using John Colley's information.

Mark 2 points on your mainline exactly 12" apart. It can be paint stains on two ties or coloring the ballast at those two points with rust or grime colors. In any case, it would be very easy to clock your trains with a stop watch.

10-4!

[wjstix]

Thru lengthy detailed trackplanning...well OK, thru blind luck...my HO mainline 'loop' came out to almost exactly one scale kilometer in length, so it was pretty easy to figure out the speed in kilometers (i.e. if it takes one minute for the train to do around the loop, it's going 60KPH, two minutes is 30 KPH etc.) and then to transfer that into MPH's. I made up a chart, and when I'm curious I can just time how long it takes a train to go around once and then use the chart to see the speed.

BTW I tend to run slow - 35 MPH is about tops for passenger, 20 MPH for freights. Course scale speed depends on era and area modelled - a 1990's intermodal hot shot freight is going to go a lot faster than a 1940's steam-hauled ore train !!