How fast is your model train going in scale speed?

[b.nice2000]

A few years ago, I put together this page for my local model railway club.

 

Thought it might be interesting especially for people running high speed trains like Japanese Shinkansens.

 

All you need is a 3, 4m or 5m section and a stop watch.

 

https://www.tnmrc.org.au/What speed is your train going.html

Edited June 3 by b.nice2000

[cteno4]

Many years ago we worked out a table for our main Shinkansen loop on our club layout so folks could time/speed the trains. Then one of the vendors at the train show we did all the time sold a digital speedometer based on 2 photo receptors and realized our layout was perfect to show off his product so he gave us one and we had fun with it for a few years until it broke. Sadly the company went away. One of our members was playing with a new arduino based system, but moved away,

 

after a while it was amazing to see that folks could hit proper speeds after some experience seeing the proper speed with the speedometer or timing.

 

jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

I have a speed measuring device, and generally I can say trains run way too fast 🙂

 

The device I have can measure up to around 500 scale km/h, and most shikansen trigger that limit.

 

[Madsing]

I've also made an Arduino-based speed measurement device.

It's described here: https://shin-yukari.weebly.com/blog/train-speed-measurement

With the Arduino sketch here: https://github.com/madsing98/Yukari-Speed-Display

 

Marc

 

[Takahama Trainwatcher]

I borrow a BeeSpi V Photogate timer from work. Very simple to use. All my trains run at the correct scale speeds. At first they felt slow, but I got used to it and I really do like them at those lower speeds.

Edited June 3 by Takahama Trainwatcher

[Wolf]

Yeah, we at the club use some speed measuring as well, and most trains out of box are unrealisticly fast XD. 300 km/h DF200? No prob. 500 km/h shinkansen? You get it.

 

We run dcc and usually tune them down to scale speed.

[Kingmeow]

There is the commercially available Accutrack speedometer made by MRT.

 

 

Someone brought one of these to the Amherst Model Railway Show in Springfield, Mass. in January.  I was able to run my Kato NS700 at scale speed and it had more umph to even go faster.  😎

 

As a side note, not endorsing you do this, but we had a long, 30 foot plus, twin straight track.  At the end of the show the younger engineers were drag racing consists!  🤣  The speedometer was used to read the final speed though it's hard to predict who would win and having the speedometer on the right track.

Edited June 3 by Kingmeow

[cteno4]

The units we had were little photoresistors you put set distances apart and then set a pin on the board for distance they were apart and scale and mph/kph, then read out on small led display that we mounted in a billboard next to the Shinkansen line it was attached to. It was a simple pic board with programmed eprom. Later he had it auto sense light levels better. If you used it in a tunnel you needed to put a little led above each track photoresistor.

 

it was simple and effective. Sadly the chap got ill and I believe passed away if memory serves me right. One of our members has had it on his list to replicate it to use on an arduino nano, but hasn’t gotten to it. Would be nice to have on a Ttrak module as we are constantly telling folks train speeds. Would be fun to have the readout in the face of the module.

 

we have another member retiring that is a programmer so maybe a project for his retirement! He was planning on doing the sankei gibli bathhouse…

 

Shinkansen drag races, now that’s how to strip a drive shaft! Or some spectacular wrecks going over the side! Problem with any Shinkansen couplers is they don’t disengage easily when derailing and can pull a whole train off the layout. I know this after watching a club member accidentally run a Shinkansen off the end of the yard once and even though he stopped power but by that time 3 or so cars started over the edge and it was a slow motion film of the whole train being dragged over the end of the yard! Once that motorcar is over the edge the rest runs away easily.

 

Jeff

[Beaver]

Tramfabriek sell a speedometer you can place beside the track. It can be set up for several different scales.

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/285581947888?itmmeta=01HZG4K5JQYR2N61XFG6Z9YD9K&hash=item427e02b3f0:g:8RwAAOSwOgRlZi9j

[Martijn Meerts]

The one I have is the LS-Digital µCon-Railspeed. It operates with 2 photosensors, and you can set which scale you're running on the device. There's a screen on the device that shows direction and speed.

 

I also have the additional box to connect it to PC, and iTrain fully supports the device to automate speed measurements so running the trains computer controlled is more accurate. It was a bit of an investment, especially considering speed measurement can also be done with just some track and 2 occupancy detectors. However, the Railspeed is quite a bit more accurate, and much faster.

 

But, always fun seeing a small shunting steamer doing 250km/h 😄