Any Train Simulator/model railroading geeks here?

[Green Baron]

North America has the same gauge as most of Europe, i just duckduckgo'ed. 1435mm.

The Swiss run some of their networks on narrow gauge, over under and between the mountains. The transit lines are standard gauge of course.

The https://www.matterhorngotthardbahn.ch/en/winter/ 1m gauge, a beautiful railway trip btw, partly runs on cograil mounted between the rails to master the slopes. It switches while slowly driving over it, without stop.

Edited February 10, 2018 by Green Baron

[Kerbinchaser]

3 minutes ago, MedwedianPresident said:

(I have started a thread in this section, so we should transfer discussion.)

 

Hm...recreating whole Kerbin could be possible. However, a planet-circling railway will need to solve the problem of curvature - I recall that some mods add "portals", which would allow for the railway to be consecutive.

 

But we should start with KSC first.

Ya xD what version of T:ANE do you have?

[MedwedianPresident]

14 minutes ago, Lo Var Lachland said:

Oh my gosh lol you really want to make the KSC??  

 

Actually, now that i think about it.... because Kerbin is so small, you could make a full model of kerbin and create railroad systems. 

Read this:

 

1 minute ago, Lo Var Lachland said:

Ya xD what version of T:ANE do you have?

SP2, I think. But does it matter?

 

Let's use the thread I made for discussion in order not to derail (no pun intended) this one. We could also make a discord channel, if you wish.

Edited February 10, 2018 by MedwedianPresident

[Kerbinchaser]

41 minutes ago, MedwedianPresident said:

Read this:

 

SP2, I think. But does it matter?

 

Let's use the thread I made for discussion in order not to derail (no pun intended) this one. We could also make a discord channel, if you wish.

No not the service pack. Do you have the: Default version, platinum... Etc.

[MedwedianPresident]

I guess that it's the default version. Please use the thread I made for questions.

[Kerbinchaser]

4 minutes ago, MedwedianPresident said:

I guess that it's the default version. Please use the thread I made for questions.

Done and done.

[adsii1970]

Well, the clock has begun to count down. My wife and I have decided that in three years, we will be having a house built. By that time, the only debts we'll have is the +/- 100k of student loan debt (a Ph.D. isn't cheap).

Anyhow, I now have a bad case of train fever... and am about to embark on the pre-layout journey of figuring out the basics of my new layout. I've settled on an era that will cover the 1970s through about the mid-1990s, and will freelance/prototype a fictitious railway, the Northern Louisiana and Gulf.

So, there's the flag image of the fictitious railroad. I'm debating between painting the locomotives in a Union Pacific color scheme, something in a KCS scheme (medium light grey) or maybe something completely different for the region. If I were to do a fictitious color scheme, I'm debating between two different color schemes.

I am going to limit the railroad to being nothing more than a short line/regional railroad which will cover the area of northern Texas, Northern Louisiana, and southern Arkansas. My daughter (who loves trains as much as I do), talked me into going all the way to the "beach" - Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Click on spoiler to see map of the region we'll condense to fit on our railway:

Spoiler

The house plans we are looking at using has a full finished basement, the perfect area for our railway. And the freight handled by the area is pretty diverse and includes grain, oil, coal, timber, and cattle traffic as it's regular freight. And what's more, the area gives me the ability to feature locomotives from my favorite rail lines, KCS (Kansas City Southern), Union Pacific, and Illinois Central. I will be modeling in N Scale, so even a modestly sized layout will allow for a lot of real estate to be modeled.

I'm pretty stoked!

Edited February 12, 2018 by adsii1970

[Green Baron]

19 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

Well, the clock has begun to count down. My wife and I have decided that in three years, we will be having a house built. By that time, the only debts we'll have is the +/- 100k of student loan debt (a Ph.D. isn't cheap).

Outch to the debt. Get rid of it before the interests rise. I am in the lucky state of having the house ready (i made the real estate property step early in life ;-)).

19 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

Anyhow, I now have a bad case of train fever... and am about to embark on the pre-layout journey of figuring out the basics of my new layout. I've settled on an era that will cover the 1970s through about the mid-1990s, and will freelance/prototype a fictitious railway, the Northern Louisiana and Gulf.

I inherited a model railroad from my grandfather. That was in the 80s, and the system doesn't exist any more. About 15 years ago i had a phase when i bought a lot of stuff but only played "carpet railroading" for a while. This thread here (and Squads reluctance toward further developing KSP, side blow intended) was actually the last kick i needed to rearranged things to make room, gave away furniture i never used, went to the carpenter last week and ordered a stack of wood. I was told that it'll be delivered "this week". But it is the carnival week in a strongly catholic country. Nothing will happen before Wednesday, on Thursday everybody is sick and nobody here goes to work on the bridge day before the weekend.

First thing i plan shall be a shadow station and an oval (5m by 1,6m), second step above that a roll-off hill and a track harp to sort cars. That'll require some testing to get a feeling for the right slopes. I like sound & movement :-)

I am not religious over epochs or colors, and right now i have many more cars and locos than i can actually play with. H0 that is, 2 line direct current and DCC control, so the 5 by 1,6 are relative. So i might already need an element to make an L out of the large rectangle. Train lengths will surely be 2m. H0 it is the "action size" :-)

19 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

So, there's the flag image of the fictitious railroad.

Reminds me of the Fleur de Lis. You're a historian so this is probably not an incident ? I am a total ignorant concerning American history.

19 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

Click on spoiler to see map of the region we'll condense to fit on our railway:

Nice.

All in all, i think i will delay real model- and landscape making until the wooden skeleton annoys me too much ...

[adsii1970]

1 minute ago, Green Baron said:

Outch to the debt. Get rid of it before the interests rise. I am in the lucky state of having the house ready (i made the real estate property step early in life ;-)).

I am on a repayment plan because I teach in a high-poverty area. It also locks in my interest rate at a fairly low one. I'm currently making double payments for the next seven years. The university I teach at says once I bring the balance below $70k, they will pay off the balance!

3 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

I inherited a model railroad from my grandfather. That was in the 80s, and the system doesn't exist any more. About 15 years ago i had a phase when i bought a lot of stuff but only played "carpet railroading" for a while. This thread here (and Squads reluctance toward further developing KSP, side blow intended) was actually the last kick i needed to rearranged things to make room, gave away furniture i never used, went to the carpenter last week and ordered a stack of wood. I was told that it'll be delivered "this week". But it is the carnival week in a strongly catholic country. Nothing will happen before Wednesday, on Thursday everybody is sick and nobody here goes to work on the bridge day before the weekend.

I have rolling stock I bought in that same time. A hodgepodge of grain and box cars. One of the companies that made the rolling stock no longer exists. So, I will have to find a bunch of replacement parts for couplers and trucks. I want it to look less like toys and be more prototypical, even if the like is fictitious.

5 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

First thing i plan shall be a shadow station and an oval (5m by 1,6m), second step above that a roll-off hill and a track harp to sort cars. That'll require some testing to get a feeling for the right slopes. I like sound & movement :-)

Same here. I love sound and movement and a reason to have diverse rolling stock. The region I plan to model will require some river crossings, some mountain areas (and cuts, fills, and tunnels!), and other fun things.

6 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

I am not religious over epochs or colors, and right now i have many more cars and locos than i can actually play with. H0 that is, 2 line direct current and DCC control, so the 5 by 1,6 are relative. So i might already need an element to make an L out of the large rectangle. Train lengths will surely be 2m. H0 it is the "action size" :-)

I'm planning to go DCC too, and with N Scale, this will be a bit of a challenge. Not a lot of room inside the locos to play with, but it is doable. There's been a lot of development in N scale since the 1980s. With the house plan we like (and if we have it built), the basement dimensions where the layout will be is roughly 4 meters by 6.75 meters. Lots of room for N scale using bench work...

13 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Reminds me of the Fleur de Lis. You're a historian so this is probably not an incident ? I am a total ignorant concerning American history.

Yup, intentional. The entire region of the railroad is the French territory and colony of Louisiana (Napoleon allowed the U.S. to purchase it in 1801). The red, yellow, and grey color scheme of the logo is a hat tip to two of my favorite railroads:

 

17 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

All in all, i think i will delay real model- and landscape making until the wooden skeleton annoys me too much ...

I plan to do all the bench work first, but I want to have a plan when I do the bench work. I know I will need a river crossing scene, some small hills, swampland, coast land, and east Texas plains. There'll be an under-the table track to allow for trains to continually operate and a under the table rolling stock yard to store the cars and locomotives. I also plan to have a container yard and multi-role freight yard, and a few smaller yards and sidings to service miscellaneous industries along the way.

[Kerbinchaser]

I love it @adsii1970. Maybe I'll build it in my simulator and make some patched locos. 

Edited February 12, 2018 by Lo Var Lachland

[DDE]

On ‎10‎.‎02‎.‎2018 at 11:01 PM, Green Baron said:

North America has the same gauge as most of Europe, i just duckduckgo'ed. 1435mm.

The Swiss run some of their networks on narrow gauge, over under and between the mountains. The transit lines are standard gauge of course.

The https://www.matterhorngotthardbahn.ch/en/winter/ 1m gauge, a beautiful railway trip btw, partly runs on cograil mounted between the rails to master the slopes. It switches while slowly driving over it, without stop.

These gauges are not Kerbal enough. All of these are Unterzüge. You all need some 3000 mm.

[Green Baron]

The steam loco one in the foreground looks like a German BR 50 that ran with similar passenger cars until the early 70s (71/72) in western Germany.

A 3m gauge doesn't exist. You'd have ridiculous friction losses in curves or you need single wheel suspension. Afaik 7foot was the largest ever made ...

 

Edit: the term "Unterzug", plural "Unterzüge" does actually exist in German, but has nothing to do with railroad. In architecture (e.g. bridges) its a downstand beam, in construction a binding girder or a binding intertie.

e.g. (look at the ceiling): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unterzug_(Bauwesen)#/media/File:Altar_de_la_Colegiata_de_San_Salvador_de_Cantamuda.jpg

or (the beams under the pathway):

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unterzug_(Bauwesen)#/media/File:Bagni_di_Craveggia_14.JPG

 

Edited February 13, 2018 by Green Baron

[Johnny Wishbone]

On 2/10/2018 at 2:40 PM, Lo Var Lachland said:

Wow, O scale? I rarely see those XD

I see you like east coast railroading. Around where I live, I always see massive coal drags led by those black horses. Also, when i was driving through Ohio on my last vacation, I spotted this 'lil beauty:

 

O is incredibly expensive and a space hog, so a lot of people just go HO. I prefer O.

I grew up in the midwest (hence the CN stuff) and currently live on the east coast, so NS and occasionally CSX is pretty much all I see here. There is a small yard not too far from my house, but it doesn't get a whole lot of traffic. Maybe one consist a week. But its cool to drive by and catch one coming through and getting broken up and re-classified for local delivery.

[Shpaget]

5 hours ago, Green Baron said:

A 3m gauge doesn't exist. You'd have ridiculous friction losses in curves or you need single wheel suspension. Afaik 7foot was the largest ever made ...

Schwerer Gustav says "Hi!".

It was 7.1 m wide and rode on two parallel tracks. I'm not sure exactly how wide those tracks were spaced out, but I'd presume just under those 7.1 m would be a safe guess. Sure, not a single gauge, but still...

Joking aside, yes broadest gauge is around 7 feet (2410 mm), but in any case, train wheels don't slip in curves. Wheels are slightly conical with wider part near the flange. In a curve the wheels move slightly outwards from the center line, which means that the outer wheel suddenly has a larger circumference than the inner, which leads to the wheels properly following the curve without slipping and sliding.

[Green Baron]

Yep, i think it rolled on parallel standard tracks and the inner and outer sets were independent. Nevertheless, it probably fulfills @DDE's criteria for "kerbalness" :-)

Nice hint with the tapering !

[Kerbinchaser]

On 2/13/2018 at 2:14 PM, Johnny Wishbone said:

O is incredibly expensive and a space hog, so a lot of people just go HO. I prefer O.

I grew up in the midwest (hence the CN stuff) and currently live on the east coast, so NS and occasionally CSX is pretty much all I see here. There is a small yard not too far from my house, but it doesn't get a whole lot of traffic. Maybe one consist a week. But its cool to drive by and catch one coming through and getting broken up and re-classified for local delivery.

Yeah I have a small classification yard here to set out gondolas and boxcars (mostly) for transport to local small industries. Occasionally I'll see an Intermodal, but those guys are probably heading to port cities like norfolk or DC. 

I usually see the VRE or the Northeast Regional. I live along the northeast Corridor, which means we get an Amtrak Train every hour or so. 

Spoiler

I envy my friend in NC though. He lives, quite literally, 100 feet from the Norfolk Southerns R-Line.  

When I was visiting first, I had no idea, so when I heard a K5LA from abut 250 feet away and the rumble of a P42, I jumped. 

He just nodded towards the tracks, and very casually said: "Yeah, we get a train every hour, but we don't really notice."

 

Later that night, I was awoken by a mile long NS intermodal thundering through at 30 miles an hour.

Usually, people say that real estate by the tracks loses value, but MAN, would I love to live where my friend does. That would be railfan HEAVEN. Just set up a time-lapse and watch the trains later.  

Edited March 5, 2018 by Lo Var Lachland

[Johnny Wishbone]

11 hours ago, Lo Var Lachland said:

Usually, people say that real estate by the tracks loses value, but MAN, would I love to live where my friend does. That would be railfan HEAVEN. Just set up a time-lapse and watch the trains later.  

If you are a railfan, check out this link:

http://modeltrainjournal.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15463

It is a thread started about 4 years ago by a guy named Lucas who railfans mostly in the Detroit area. The thread is currently 25 pages long and still being updated today. It is full of a lot of great pics and information about the various railroad operations in that whole area. He focuses on metro Detroit, but also heads out to Ohio and other parts of Michigan as well.

[Kerbinchaser]

11 hours ago, Johnny Wishbone said:

If you are a railfan, check out this link:

http://modeltrainjournal.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15463

It is a thread started about 4 years ago by a guy named Lucas who railfans mostly in the Detroit area. The thread is currently 25 pages long and still being updated today. It is full of a lot of great pics and information about the various railroad operations in that whole area. He focuses on metro Detroit, but also heads out to Ohio and other parts of Michigan as well.

Wowie, awesome shots. Rare catches too.  

On 2/13/2018 at 10:16 AM, Green Baron said:

The steam loco one in the foreground looks like a German BR 50 that ran with similar passenger cars until the early 70s (71/72) in western Germany.

 

Spoiler

(snip)

 

Is that Bachmann track? It looks like it. 

 

Edited February 15, 2018 by Lo Var Lachland
Look, if it filters out the word, it means the word isn't supposed to be in the forum. Please don't work around that.

[Green Baron]

Without anything political as well, i don't like things of war. And this has nothing to do with the people, this thread was a marvelous idea !

What do i have, let's see ... if you want to see a variety of trains under stress, search Youtube for "Geislinger Steige". For example ICE trains, TGVs, gorgeous diesel locomotives like the Maxima  It is a step in the landscape where trains make 110m in 5,5 km, smallest curve radius is ~280m. The "Steige" has a history going back to late Roman times as a long distance connection.

Europe has the (dis-)advantage of having several different systems and a dense railroad network (except spain).

The single locomotives you see have helped pushing a train up the hill and then return empty.

Example:

That diesel hydraulic locomotive is a Voith Maxima. I'd like to have it on my (future) layout in H0 :-)

The white trains (ICE) regular go at 250km/h. The French TGV Thalis even 300. If i am not mistaken it also holds the world record of 570km/h for rail based trains. The Maglevs are of course faster.

Or: steam double traction at around 4:00:

 

[Green Baron]

1 hour ago, Lo Var Lachland said:

Is that Bachmann track? It looks like it. 

The track is Roco. That is 2-line DC. Control of locos is via hand held controller (self driver ;-)), turnouts via DCC (PC).

1 hour ago, Lo Var Lachland said:

One more question: I forgot. What scale do you model in? 

Me ? H0 it is. I haven't yet decided to really model anything. The layout i have a rough plan of will be for playing. At least at the beginning. I mean, it is a question of money as well, all those add-ons like houses, trees, high wire, cars, lights, signals etc. pp. cost.

Am still waiting for the wood to come ...

[kapteenipirk]

Remember when i mentioned about wanting to customize the mail-cars and the baggage car that i had.

Decided to give it a go since there wasn't really much to lose, as i got all those cars pretty darn cheap (15 each for the mail-cars and 20 for the baggage-car).

And here they are.

 

And here's the other side.

 

The paint-job is fictional and uses whatever decals i happened to have laying around. In this case, the decals are from: a 1:72 Eurofighter Typhoon that i never finished, a 1:72 Man 5-ton that i painted but never applied the decals to, and some decals from old Warhammer 40k models that i gave away a long time ago.

I wanted to make the paint-job look similar to that on regular Bundeswehr vehicles, hence the green, brown (more tan'ish/khaki'ish in this case) and black camo pattern. The UN logos i added just because i had a bunch of them around and because i taught they would make the cars look a little more interesting. Those Space wolf logos where added for the same "lets make it more interesting" reason...and because i just really like them.

I also added some numbers on top of each car, as i wanted to make the paintjob so that it would sort of continue from one car to the next, with the exception of the baggage car witch i wanted to look a little different (bigger camo patches and different mirroring on the decals). So, with the numbers, i would always be able to put them in the right order.

Oh, and as bonus detail, i painted all of the door handles and railings silver.

 

I wanted to paint the little green baggage car as-well, but there was no way for me to remove the roof (didn't want to risk accidentally painting over it) without doing some damage (it was either glued in or was part of the body), unlike the ones on the 4-axle cars where they could just be popped off.

Spoiler

Guessing they wanted to give you easy access in-case you want to add some interior lights or maby even some cargo.

I probably would not have started painting the cars if they wouldn't have come apart so well, as i was really paranoid about accidentally painting over something that i shouldn't have and ruining them for good.

Tough i almost did in one aspect, the tabs that hold the roof in place are very brittle (probs because of their age) and even tough i tried to be as careful as i could, i ended up breaking some of them (wouldn't have been as bad if a bunch of them weren't broken already).

I would have had to glue them back in place if enough of the tabs would have broken off, it wouldn't really be a problem unless i wanted to maby add some lights in the future.

 

Im overall very happy with the end-result , tough i feel that the camopattern for cars 1 and 2 ended up looking too similar, plus the paint-job ain't exactly the smoothest one.

 

And bonus good news, i got news that one of my cousins and hes family are coming to visit this weekend and he absolutely loves my layout, and since the weather is ok enough (still very cold), i can finally rebuild the layout  and move that pile of stuff from my very crowded closet to the balcony.

Im currently on the planning phase on weather i want it to be like i originally wanted (outer and inner track that are connected with a siding for a big train carage) or like the way it was before (single large track with multiple sidings).

The reason why it was a single large track, was because i got quite a bit of extra space in the balcony and wanted to fill it with an extended outer track witch didn't leave me with enough track to make an inner one as-well.

I will most likely just have one train running on it for now, and ill be taking the loco back inside after every run just to be sure that nothing goes wrong with it.

 

So, time to release my inner train nerd and have some real fun this week .

[Green Baron]

On 12.2.2018 at 8:54 PM, adsii1970 said:

I have rolling stock I bought in that same time. A hodgepodge of grain and box cars. One of the companies that made the rolling stock no longer exists. So, I will have to find a bunch of replacement parts for couplers and trucks.

Hint: use the same couplers on all cars and locos, ones that can be pre-decoupled for shunting fun :-)

All cars and locomotives should have the standardized NEM mounting.

I just bought two packages of short couplers from a brand that i think will still exist in 20 years and changed them all through.

 

Carpenter said they'll deliver the wood tomorrow afternoon

[adsii1970]

Just now, Green Baron said:

Hint: use the same couplers on all cars and locos, ones that can be pre-decoupled for shunting fun :-)

All cars and locomotives should have the standardized NEM mounting.

I just bought two packages of short couplers from a brand that i think will still exist in 20 years and changed them all through.

 

Carpenter said they'll deliver the wood tomorrow afternoon

I'm going with all new kaydee couplers and trucks where I can. I'm going to use the Magne-matic coupling system in my industrial spurs.

In my old box, I still have the rail and coupler test gague so that's not going to be a problem. Last weekend, I purchased the 2017 N and Z scale Walthers catalogue, mainly to plan out a couple of industrial spur modules. At this point, planning (and a lot of dreaming) is all I can do.

Can you post picture updates as you go?

[Green Baron]

1 minute ago, adsii1970 said:

Can you post picture updates as you go?

I'd be happy to, sure :-)

Here or shall we move to a model railroad forum ? If so, which one ?

[adsii1970]

Why not keep it here. Who knows, maybe we can introduce the younger generation to model railroading.