Scale Speed: Scaled Time

[Guest ___]

WARNING: Quantum physics and temporal mechanics discussed within.

 

Something that;'s been dwelling in the back of my mind since I was thirteen. If speeds are scaled in model railroading, then proportionately in theory time should also be scaled. If true, and I really am not feeling up to frying my brain this early in the day to Einstein's theory of relativity which dictates time is a variable and not a constant before my brain medicine, and by that I mean third cup of Mountain Dew/ If in theory I were to place in one of my stations a clock or clock tower at scaled, how much faster would a minute be. IE: 1scale minute = 35 seconds.

[bill937ca]

60 seconds in  a minute

60 minutes in a hour

24 hours in a day

 

3600 seconds in an hour

86400 seconds in a day

 

1/150th time

 

576 seconds in a 1/150th day  (86,400/150)

 

24 seconds in a 1/150th hour

 

Now you need distance........

 

I'm thinging 60mph is a mile a minute.  But in Japan that would be kph.

 

5280' x 12 = 63,360 inches in a mile

 

63360 /150 = 422.4 inches in a 1/150th mile

 

 

That's enough for now......

[serenityFan]

LOL...

 

Is this also where a scaled train can arrive at the next station before it actually leaves the current station?  ;D ;D

 

As for the scale, if N scale is 1:150, then shouldn't 1 minute be scaled to 1/150 scale minute= 0.4 second?  :o

[CaptOblivious]

Time need not be scaled with space.

 

But, because our models are often much compressed from the real thing, space constraints may have you modeling a 1 mile line as a fraction of a scale-mile. Which means stations that are 5 minutes apart, in our scale model, are really like 30 second apart.

 

Which is why we have fast clocks. But this kind of time scaling is because our model is /not/ to scale, not because it /is/ to scale.

[CaptOblivious]

Sorry, my last post was rather curt, and I apologize for that!

 

Here is what I meant in more detail.

 

We are modeling a mile of prototype. This requires about 38 segments of Tomix 280mm track (10.72m or 35.2ft) of our basement.

Now, a real train traveling at 95km/h (60mph to make the math easy) will take one minute to traverse that real mile.

 

Now, do we want our model train to traverse those 38 segments also in one minute? If the answer is yes (because we are using the real timetable to order our operations, say, or because it looks good, or whatever), then we should not compress time.

 

But, if the answer is no (one minute is a long time! Bring on the trains!) then we have to either make the model travel faster (in scale mph) than the prototype does (in real mph). Or we can claim that we have also compressed time too. THis way, we can claim that the train is traveling at a prototypically accurate speed, but that time is passing much faster. But notice that we can scale time down by any factor we want: it doesn't have to be 1/150.

 

So, no need to scale down time, but we can if we like.

 

Now, the twist.

My basement isn't 35.2ft long. My model of the prototype is more like 10ft long. Which is more like a quarter-scale-mile. I would like the time between stations to be more like the prototype: I want my train to traverse this distance in the same minute that it takes the real train. Again, we have two options.

 

One: We can slow the train down so it takes a full minute to travel the 10ft. But this means that the train is travelling slower (in scale-mph) than the prototype, and maybe we don't like that.

 

So the usual solution is to say that 15 real seconds = one scale minute. Now, the model train traverses the distance in 15 real seconds, so it travels at a good-looking speed, but since we have scaled model time down, by our timetables, it took one scale minute to traverse that distance. This is what fastclocks do. It lets us compress miles upon miles of real track into a very tiny space!

[railzilla]

For me i don't like scaled timefast clocks and the like. The simple reason is that you cannot do all actions faster in a scaled model than the prototype. For example switching and shunting still needs time. So i prefer run realtime but cut out some time once the train leaves the scene. Like in a movie when a Hero  travels form London to New York you see the plane take of at Heathrow and then you see the plane land at JFK, you dont see the plane for hours over the atlantic. So for model train whre you model a line were a train passes by every 30 min you can run the train but once it left the scene you can set the clock 28 minutes ahed and run the next one.

[Guest ___]

Sorry, my last post was rather curt, and I apologize for that!

 

Here is what I meant in more detail.

 

We are modeling a mile of prototype. This requires about 38 segments of Tomix 280mm track (10.72m or 35.2ft) of our basement.

Now, a real train traveling at 95km/h (60mph to make the math easy) will take one minute to traverse that real mile.

 

Now, do we want our model train to traverse those 38 segments also in one minute? If the answer is yes (because we are using the real timetable to order our operations, say, or because it looks good, or whatever), then we should not compress time.

 

But, if the answer is no (one minute is a long time! Bring on the trains!) then we have to either make the model travel faster (in scale mph) than the prototype does (in real mph). Or we can claim that we have also compressed time too. THis way, we can claim that the train is traveling at a prototypically accurate speed, but that time is passing much faster. But notice that we can scale time down by any factor we want: it doesn't have to be 1/150.

 

So, no need to scale down time, but we can if we like.

 

Now, the twist.

My basement isn't 35.2ft long. My model of the prototype is more like 10ft long. Which is more like a quarter-scale-mile. I would like the time between stations to be more like the prototype: I want my train to traverse this distance in the same minute that it takes the real train. Again, we have two options.

 

One: We can slow the train down so it takes a full minute to travel the 10ft. But this means that the train is travelling slower (in scale-mph) than the prototype, and maybe we don't like that.

 

So the usual solution is to say that 15 real seconds = one scale minute. Now, the model train traverses the distance in 15 real seconds, so it travels at a good-looking speed, but since we have scaled model time down, by our timetables, it took one scale minute to traverse that distance. This is what fastclocks do. It lets us compress miles upon miles of real track into a very tiny space!

 

Wow, you gave some thought to this one didn't ya, Capt'n. I think I have to reread it a few times to take it all in.

[Guest ___]

Resurrected for the sake of all the new members who have joined since the first of the year.

[Mudkip Orange]

One: We can slow the train down so it takes a full minute to travel the 10ft. But this means that the train is travelling slower (in scale-mph) than the prototype, and maybe we don't like that.

This would be called "the jummamit approach"

[Hobby Dreamer]

There is no reason for time to change in scale - in fact gravity is the same in 1:1 as in 1:160 (gravity depends on time) so time scaling is as mentioned above is only a convenience for layout operation and the fact that few of us have miles of track (in scale) .