WM Western Lines Engineering Report

[wm3798]

Santa Bob strikes again!!

[MVW]

One potential problem that I could see with compressing distance would be speed.  If you compress distance at a rate of ~5:1, the speed of your trains will go up 5x.  Put another way, at a given speed, a train can cover 5 times as many miles in an hour.  This would seem to exacerbate the issue of trains that are usually already too fast.

Eric, I think of it this way: A train going 60 miles an hour travels a mile per minute. Now, using an 8:1 fast clock, that mile is represented by three feet of track. Your "minute" is now just 7.5 seconds long. So covering that three feet of track in 7.5 seconds is the equivalent of traveling at 60 mph.

I've only done a little operating with a fast clock (although I expect to be doing a lot more within a few months, if the layout gods cooperate). But I think the big surprise to a lot of folks is just how slow you have to go. At 30 mph, it takes 15 seconds to move three feet. At 15 mph, you're up to 30 seconds to cover three feet. That's crawling!

Jim

[eric220]

Eric, I think of it this way: A train going 60 miles an hour travels a mile per minute. Now, using an 8:1 fast clock, that mile is represented by three feet of track. Your "minute" is now just 7.5 seconds long. So covering that three feet of track in 7.5 seconds is the equivalent of traveling at 60 mph.

I've only done a little operating with a fast clock (although I expect to be doing a lot more within a few months, if the layout gods cooperate). But I think the big surprise to a lot of folks is just how slow you have to go. At 30 mph, it takes 15 seconds to move three feet. At 15 mph, you're up to 30 seconds to cover three feet. That's crawling!

Jim

Jim, I definitely get that a fast clock's job is to slow the trains down and create "distance" by increasing the time it takes for a train to get from point A to B.  I suppose if you used the two in conjunction, you could use them to balance each other, making the effect of the fast clock that much more pronounced.  So take a 5:1 distance reduction, coupled with a 5:1 fast clock, and you've changed both terms of the equation equally, so a train going a scale 60 MPH will take a fast 60 seconds to go a shortened mile.  Interesting...

[conrail98]

Lee,

I would recommend not using a fast clock. No one around me uses one and the reason was simple, if even one person isn't there, it can throw a whole schedule off if you are doing fast clock operations. Use a train sequence with real start times (could be based on a starting time of say 7:30 PM or 0 based) and go from there. It'll help keep your operator and dispatcher sane,

Phil

[pwnj]

It'll help keep your operator and dispatcher sane...

That's assuming they started even remotely close to sane, of course.

[cv_acr]

Lee,

I would recommend not using a fast clock. No one around me uses one and the reason was simple, if even one person isn't there, it can throw a whole schedule off if you are doing fast clock operations. Use a train sequence with real start times (could be based on a starting time of say 7:30 PM or 0 based) and go from there. It'll help keep your operator and dispatcher sane,

Phil

I say BS to that old argument. The problem is your schedule not how you measure time. If it takes 30 real minutes to do something, you schedule 0.5*fastClockRatio fast-hours to do it. A fast clock doesn't really make time go faster or slower, you're just measuring it differently.

[wm3798]

Maybe I'll just go back to releasing a new train from staging whenever it's time to open the next beer...  Much less controversial, especially after the 4th or 5th train is out...

[eric220]

Maybe I'll just go back to releasing a new train from staging whenever it's time to open the next beer...  Much less controversial, especially after the 4th or 5th train is out...

Definitely the way to go.

[MichaelWinicki]

Lee, your setup is like mine, in that you have a list of trains that are released according to a schedule with some trains being dependent upon what other trains pick up or leave off in the yard(s).

My question is, what is you're looking to gain by using a fast clock?  I'm not using a fast clock myself, If your explanation is good enough maybe I should consider it! 

[Mark5]

Maybe I'll just go back to releasing a new train from staging whenever it's time to open the next beer...  Much less controversial, especially after the 4th or 5th train is out...

I likes this one, even though I've yet to have a stake (or a steak) in this!

[M.C. Fujiwara]

Maybe I'll just go back to releasing a new train from staging whenever it's time to open the next beer...  Much less controversial, especially after the 4th or 5th train is out...

So the bottleneck becomes the bottleneck.

You put the N in zeN.

[conrail98]

Maybe I'll just go back to releasing a new train from staging whenever it's time to open the next beer...  Much less controversial, especially after the 4th or 5th train is out...

Will they have to take a drink at every signal?

[wm3798]

Having run Seusscaboose's layout on a fast clock, I like the way it helps manage the schedule.  It is also useful to know when it's time to send everyone packing...

However, as noted above, Eric's layout is much more spread out than mine, so the fast clock works well as trains are located a fair distance from each other.  On mine, becoming a slave to the clock may lead to a lot of unnecessary bottlenecks...

It might be worth an experiment, but otherwise, I'm not dedicated to the idea.

Lee

[wm3798]

Just to let you know I'm still working on stuff...


Lee

[seusscaboose]

Conjunction Junction... What's Your FUNction?

that will look nice when it is all blended together....