44 tonners

[Bob Bufkin]

Believe BLW still has some.  I know one I ordered is on the way from them.

[Chris333]

How are they sold out? Many shops don't even have them listed yet. BLW is the only one I see so far. There are 2 on e-bay right now.

[bbussey]

I think BLW and MB Klein both announced them on Saturday, so the models are just starting to surface this week.

bb

[wm3798]

If everybody gets one, the next ops session can be an All 44-Tonner affair!  How many of those do you think you'd need in a lash up to haul a 25 car train up my 2.3% grade?

Lee

[up1950s]

If everybody gets one, the next ops session can be an All 44-Tonner affair!  How many of those do you think you'd need in a lash up to haul a 25 car train up my 2.3% grade?

Lee

26

[Chris333]

Just mine with it's ton of tungsten added   

[wm3798]

Hmmm.  What's 1:160th of 44 tons?...  (calculate... calculate...) 

It should weigh 550 pounds when you're done.

Lee

[wcfn100]

Hmmm.  What's 1:160th of 44 tons?...  (calculate... calculate...) 

It should weigh 550 pounds when you're done.

Lee

I think you missed a calculate in there.


Jason

[wm3798]

Bear in mind that I was a Communications major...  I went 44 x 2,000 (lbs) / 160 = 550 lbs.  What did I miss?

Professor Kool

[tom mann]

not this again...

[up1950s]

But gravity would be 160th in a perfect diminutive world that is 160th diameter would it not ? So 550 lbs /160 = 3.4375 lbs . Even that couldn't be done if it was a solid brick of the heaviest thing on earth . So what is missing that we need to remove !@#$%^ ? ???

And as an aside , if gravity was 160th lighter , then all the metals we use are wrong . As well as the scales we use for measuring . I think it's a place whose destination is unattainable except on paper .

[wm3798]

Oh yeah... I forgot about that whole earth being N scale thing.  Of course that creates the further problem of being unable to manipulate the materials, because our little N scale hands wouldn't have fingers (unless you're one of those expensive Prieser figures)

Lee

[Zox]

Volume--and therefore mass--goes by the cube of the scale. After all, you're reducing by a factor of 160 in all three dimensions, not just one. (We'll leave reduction in the fourth dimension to a future discussion on Fast Time. )

So if a real 44-tonner were perfectly reduced to N scale, its mass would become 44 / (160*160*160) = 0.0000107421875 tons, or 0.34 ounces. That may seem a bit light, until you remember that a real locomotive (like most vehicles) is mostly air.

As for reducing Earth to N scale at the same time, you'd have the same factor of 4096000 reduction in the mass of the planet. However, the surface of the planet would also be 160 times closer to the center of the planet than it is now. Since gravity changes with the square of the distance, this would offset two of the three "160"s in the original equation. Thus, the surface gravity of Earth-N would be 1/160th of the actual Earth.

So, Earth-N would be a ball 49.5 miles in diameter, and it would only take a force of about 0.002 ounces to lift an N scale 44-tonner off its surface.

Just goes to show how wimpy gravity is--it takes an awfully big pile of matter to make it, um, matter.

(edited to fix idiotic typo in first paragraph--all the math remains the same, though.)

[wm3798]

>PAFF!<

Oh man... something just broke...

[Bob Bufkin]

Just received one of mine.  Don't have time to run it this evening but I'm impressed at the looks.  Got the red & yellow unletterd.  Still waiting for the PRR unit.