Thursday, May 12, 2011

An observation about switching

Speaking as a railfan. I'm lucky.
Lucky that my office overlooks a small rail served industrial park and every afternoon a train of varying lengths pulls into the yard and cars are spotted to the industries hereabouts.
Now, apart from the fact that this could be a highly desirable prototype to model for a future layout. (Let's not go there just yet.) I get a daily opportunity to watch switching operations and see how trains really run at slow speeds.
From my office window they run smoothly. No bumping and banging and bouncing over sagging track. From here, no more than 50 yards away everything looks perfect. I know it isn't of course because I've stood down there and heard the bumping and banging and seen the bouncing.
From here it looks just as smooth as the Z scale GP35 did running on my layout from about a foot away.
Now in HO scale and upwards I know modellers can go to great pains to recreate the bumps and bounces of older track. Whereas it is very clear that in Z scale you don't need to bother even if you plan on viewing your model even from as close as your eyes can stand.

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