As a Locomotive & rolling stock modeller, I have never understood the term fast clock!
Yeah, I figure it means a a timeline that is faster than real life that can be accomplished in a ‘set’ ‘model railroading’ session.
I have access to many clocks, but like you-all, I have no idea what to program into such a clock.
This is one of those “in the know” things like newer TV commercials, that assume we already have been educated: up-on, & are masters-at, that we ‘should know all about’ since birth…
Sorry I missed that bus, even the short bus…
I really hope to learn about ‘Klokkenschpiels’ here in this thread, after all, I’m just a few miles from the Bily Clock Museum, & it is really close to ICE/CP rails in a daytrip jaunt…
An HO scale mile is 60 point something ft. long. So you have a mileage ratio of 50 to 1. I don’t think that you can base a fast clock ratio based on those numbers alone.
I don’t think you can turn your one actual mile of track into 50 miles with a fast clock. It seems to me that it would result in a 50:1 ratio. But I am not that knowledgeable about picking fast clock ratios.
What may work better is if you had a timetable for the RR you are modeling, and it had the two towns listed in it, and it told you how long it took between the towns. (Arrival and departure times) Then you could time your train from one town to the next and figure it out.
Tony Koester talks about exactly this in the January 2009 issue of MR, pg. 77. (I just happened to see the article today as I was looking through it.) It may be worth your wild getting the issue.
as i unerstand it, a fastclock takes realtime and speeds it up so that in operations a run of an hour between stations with a 4:1 fast clock would take 15 min. therefor a 12 hour day woul take 3 hrs. the idea is to move cars realisticly within practical time constraints.
As for my calculations, you are making my point about where I think I am confused. If I have a 60 ft mainline and that 60 ft represents the 50 miles then a real train going 55 mph would take 0.91 hours to get from Point A to Point B. Therefore, it would take an HO train at a velocity of 13 in/min to go the entire 60 ft in 0.91 hrs. Now, if I speeded it up to a 3:1 fast clock, the HO velocity would be 13*3 or 39 in/min and it would take about 18 minutes to go 60 ft. It is the HO 1:87.1 scale that is throwing my off, hence this thread. As I indicated, I will check out that article.
I’ll take a stab at this question. A fast clock for model railroading is a way for the operator to make the mainline runs, or switching moves, “seem” more realistic. Part if this “fast clock” environment is to make the distance between stations or terminals “seem” longer by taking more time (according to the clock). The ratio of the fast clock doesn’t really equate to scale miles or distances. Even switching moves on a model railroad take less time than on the prototype. Fast clock operations are most used where the layout is run by timetable or train orders. This is especially true where there are multiple operators running trains and switching jobs. The modeler will pick a clock ratio that best suits the size of the layout, the amount of traffic being run, and the number of yard jobs.
For example, on the switching layout I am working on. there is no timetable, nor multiple trains running. My operation is based on the size of a single train (5 cars) , the time it takes to switch that train, return to the yard, and the fact that the prototype took an entire shift to do the work. Therefore, each turn on my layout will take 8 scale hours. It takes about an actual hour to work the 5 car train consist, so If I were to use a fast clock, I’d use an 8:1 ratio.
Fast clocks don’t really have anything to do with the speed the model trains actually run. That computation is confusing and not really applicable.
Instead, Fast Clocks are intended to make it seem that it is taking longer for the trains to run by speeding up only the clock on the wall. Instead of 5 real minutes to run from one end of the layout to the other, a 6:1 fast clock helps us pretend that it is actually taking 30 minutes. But the model train should run at the same speed relative to its scale environment, Fast Clock or not.
This really only matters, IMHO, in mainline running to a timetable. (But I’m a documented model railroad Fast Clock skeptic). Model switching takes relatively longer than model mainline running, so most people don’t bother with Fast Clocks for switching layouts.
Some people like Fast Clocks. I personally don’t. I have had plenty of time pressure elsewhere in my life. And since my favorite model railroad operating jobs are switching and yard jobs, a Fast Clock really only adds time stress for me when I personally would rather do the job “right” by thinking about where crewmen would be standing and such.
Byron…have checked out your site more than once, lots of great information, and I am aware of your opinion. I do not plan on operating my layout on a fast clock. I am just trying to get an idea as to how fast to run a train so that it moves at a reasonable pace without taking 1 minute to make a complete circuit BTW my layout mainline is a little under 55 ft. With several switching locations along the way I am trying to get a sense about how long, in real time, a full session could last when two trains are running and one has to enter a siding. This may not make sense to you, but I it does to me.
There’s more to the calculation. A full session can last as long or as little as you desire. Lots of it depends on the “work” the train/s are intended to do and how fast you want to do it… Fast clock time is an arbritary number. You are free to apply any clock time you want to suit your purpose.
We can compress physical sizes but not time, its a constant.
Back in the “day” people would pick a simple ratio. 12:1 was often used. This fit a 24 hour day into a 2 hours ops session that was convienent for folks. It also resulted in a 5 foot “smile” which was a term for short mile or something like that. That means your 60 foot main line was 12 smiles long. Then you would develop a timetable based on that distance. Over the last 30 years or so the as layouts have gotten larger and people have gotten more interested in prototype paperwork, the ratio has dropped to 8, 6, or 4 to 1. Some folks even operate 1:1.
In my opinion the real advantage to a fast clock was when scheduling and operating your railroad, folks could be told to meet at 12:05 on the fast clock rather than having to time things on the second hand on a real clock. For a small one person railroad that operates a shift as “run until done,” it may not make as much sense. I don’t use one on my current single train branch line.
Frank Ellison made the first “Fast Clock,” by the simple expedient of removing the hour hand from an ordinary wall clock. That gave him a default 12:1 ratio. Later clock-modifiers came up with a number of other ratios, some more useful than others.
What confuses people is that the scale speed of their train is NOT affected by use of a fast clock. Track speed 60 (scale) miles per hour is still just a smidge over one (full scale) foot per second in HO. To make that work with a hypothetical mainline 60 miles long which is actually only 60 feet long, the ‘smiles’ would be a foot apart and the train would use a fast-time ratio of 60:1 to cover that 60 dreamland miles in an hour one real minute long.
A real world example - Tomikawa to Haruyama on my layout. The prototype timetable gives a time between those stations, 7.5 kilometers apart, of nine minutes. The 1:80 scale reduction of the distance is almost 94 meters (close enough to 300 feet as doesn’t matter) The actual distance is just under 19 meters, or 1:5 the proper scale distance. The start-to-stop speed is 50kph, and maximum track speed is 70 kph. If I use a 5:1 fast time clock and operate at proper scale speed I will use up 1.8 real minutes on the run, and the train will appear to be moving at an appropriate speed. If I used ‘real’ time the start-to-stop scale speed for a nine minute run would be 10kph - slow even for a Shay!
'Scale time" and a fast clock are only appropriate if you are operating to a timetable. For any other operating mode, just run your train at an appropriate scale speed and put time on disregard.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - operating TTTO 24/30)
I don’t need a fast clock. I have discovered since retiring that about eight hours have mysteriously disappeared from each and every day (not counting naps)…Gary[:-^][swg]
My quick 2c on the original question. I’ve never used fast clock, but in a nutshell, fast clock only applies to the one dimension - time. It does not affect the other aspects, such as speed. The point of fast clock is to simulate 8 hours in say 2 hours operating session ( 4:1 ratio, or 15 minutes real time for each hour simulated time). However, it’s not the same as hitting fast forward on a VHS tape and watching everything happen faster. Your trains still going at the prototypical scale speed, not flying at 4 x speed. So while you are simulating faster clock, your still stay with “real-time” scale speed. The point of this is that instead of saying you got from station A to station B in 15 minutes, you’ll say it took you an “hour”.
If you want everything be fast, than you’ll have to soup up your diesels to run at 200m/h scale speed instead of 50m/h. But that’s not all; you’ll have to run around the layout 4 times as fast too, yet pretend that you are casually walking [(-D]
Yeah, perhaps that is why I can’t understand it, in the literal sence… Time & scale distance is an incontraversial conundrum withougtout a quantative soloution in my present sense…
Thanks for the open discussion, I have learned quite a bit from the examples & it does shed light on the concept. Thanks, appreciate it!
One concept that is often missing when discussing a fast clock is that it’s perhaps best as a scheduling tool more than an attempt to speed up operations. If a train working at a realistic pace takes a real-time hour to do its work, and the fast clock is set at 3:1, the schedule should allow at least 3 fast hours. The way I look at it on my own layout is that the fast clock adds some perception of time passage for mainline runs, and provides a convenient means for yard crews to judge call times for either building trains or expecting arrivals (i.e. the session may not always start at the same time on the actual clock, but the schedule can be built around the fast clock that can start running with the same time at the beginning of each session). It shouldn’t exist to induce stress or convince operators to run faster. High ratios like 12:1 start to get pretty silly in my opinion, and the more I run on various layouts the more I think 3:1 or maybe 4:1 is as fast as the ratio can get before it becomes a bit too hard to suspend disbelief.
Bear the fast clock is more for operational based sessions/running of trains as already mentioned. I think you stated your real objective in “I am just trying to get an idea as to how fast to run a train so that it moves at a reasonable pace without taking 1 minute to make a complete circuit”
There are other formulas out there too but they all meet the same objective. Find one you like and make it work for your RR.
Also, don’t confuse these with the term Smiles (Scale Miles). It is a similar thing but not the same animal for what it sounds like you are looking for.
