How fast or slow do you run your trains. Sometimes I like to see my switchers crawl, while other times I like to see my freights go fast. I know how to do the math to figure out scale speed, I am an engineer, but I was wondering how other folks run their trains and if anyone bothers to actually measure the scale speed of their trains?
Depends on if there are people here and how many adult beverages I have had.[:D] Most of the time it is around 40 sMPH. Takes about 1.5 minutes to make it around the A and B line.
Cuda Ken
Hi,
I typically run my HO trains in the following speeds: very slow, slow, medium, fast, very fast, and full speed ahead!
Seriously, most of the time I play “real RR” and run them at what appears to be prototypical speeds. I especially like to watch/hear the slack run out (or in) of a long freight.
Buttttt, every once in awhile I like to crank it open and give my wheelsets/couplers/track a real test. Ha, today’s HO locos (the ones I have anyway) will handle 26 inch plus curves full speed without flying off. In my early days ('60s) in HO, those Athearn rubber band drives would get airborne pretty easily.
Mobilman44
I run my freights anywhere from 15 smph to 50 smph. Passenger trains run between 40 and 80 mph.
I run mine just fast enough so the caboose doesn’t catch the locomotive.
Actually my layout is not big enough for top speeds and it is meant to be a lazy branch line where no speed records were set anyway. My branchline steam trains run at about 2 revs of the driving wheels per second tops, and the switchers run as slow as I can get them to.
I also bought a pushbike speedometer which I plan to fit into an old boxcar. Evidently you can use it with a magnet on an axle and set the wheel diameter to 33" and it will read scale speed.
cheers
All speeds, depending on locomotive and use (and how close the track gets to the edge of the layout). [:)]
Why would it bother someone to measure the scale speed of their trains? The thing I always find people forgetting while they are calculating scale speed is the fast clock. 40 smph is way different on a 12:1 fast clock than it is in real time.
There is a rule of 10 mph in the yards , and all I have is a yard , so its all slow running [:)]
Can’t go past the yard limits . [;)]
I have a mountainous HO railroad with up to 2.4% grades and relatively generous (34-36") curves, so I pretty much ‘eyeball’ how fast my trains are running. Generally between 30 and 40 smph for expidited freights and reefer ‘extras’, somewhat slower for local and ‘drag’ freights. I usually run my through passengers (only one stop at Deer Creek) about 40-50 smph, and my little local passenger (all stops including fishing holes) about 30 or so.
As I said, I’m only calculating with my eyeball, not math. As long as they look like they’re really ‘pulling’ against the grade, I’m happy. [:P]
Tom [:)]
Once in a while I pour the coal to it and get one of my shays up to 15 smph (I have them geared for a realistic top speed) . Most of the time I’m pretty casual and keep the speed around 7. I makes my 39 foot point to loop main line seem much longer when it takes a train 5 minutes to get from one end to the other. With the reversing loop I can run continuously for 10 minutes before i have to stop.
Only at posted speed limits…
Tom
I like crawling switchers. You need good running engines and track without dead spots, frogs. I’ve limited the top speed with the decoder.
At the branchline I run also slowly. This way the distance seems longer. [:)]
And this is a unit train at grade.
Wolfgang
When I had the need for speed I would take my slot cars to the commerical track and enter the weekly races.
Trains are not slot cars.
I run mine at scale speeds.
Very nice switcher. Do you have the sound eminating from that little thing? Who makes the person doing the driving looking out the window?
Thanks for all of your responses.
It seems that most of you run your trains at scale speeds. Next 2 questions;
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How do you know you are running at these speeds? Measuring them? Or eyeballing them? I have seen on MR a scale speedometer you can make or purchase.
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How does the trains speed relate to the Fast Clock?
Hansel
How do I know I am running at scale speeds? Check my website www.xdford.digitalzones.com and the “about scale speed” rather than rewrite it here…
Hope this helps
Regards
Trevor
If a loco won’t crawl along slowly without any hesitation or jerkiness it is imho not worth owning. We have a speedo hooked up to the mainline on the club & I usually clock about 44 mph.Speed limit on this stretch of track is 50 mph. The SD50’s pulling 48 RD4 coal hoppers look great at this speed. Seems most operaters run too fast to Me, but They’re running They’re train & I run Mine the way I want. The main thing is to have fun, that’s what it’s supposed to be about anyway, right ? R
I generally run pretty slow, roughly half-speed. I right now just have a switching layout, but on my previous layout I ran passenger trains at 30-35 scale MPH, general freights at maybe 20 MPH, and ore trains basically as slow as possible, maybe 12-15 MPH. Part of the reason is I think it looks better, and it makes the layout seem longer since it takes longer to travel a set distance than it would if I were running at prototype speed. It may partly be a generational thing, when I started in the hobby it was hard to get an engine that would run slowly enough to run at real speeds, so the emphasis was on how to get your engines to go slowly, and a good running engine that would crawl along was kind of a status symbol. [:)]
Several of my BLI engines with QSI sound have the “talk back” feature where you press a function button and it tells you the speed. Even I was a little surprised the other day when I was switching and my NW2 said it was only cruising along at 6 sMPH!!
Otherwise, you can measure how long it takes the train to go a set distance and convert it to scale MPH. My last layout’s mainline loop just happened to be right about 1 scale kilometer so it was pretty easy to calculate scale KPH and convert to MPH.
If a train takes 60 seconds to go one scale mile it’s going 60 MPH; if it takes 120 seconds it’s going 30 MPH, etc. You can do the same type of calculation by setting a short distance like a yard or 10 feet, but the longer the distance you measure, the more accurate it will be.
Strictly speaking I don’t think it does. The time it takes to go a scale mile isn’t really affected by a Fast Clock.
Same here. I think any engine that uses QSI sound is capable of letting you know the speed using an audible talk back feature.
Hmmmmmm…I hear voices from my choo choo’s…[:)]
I often say, as do others, to run at scale speed, but on the compressed space of a layout, scale speed is often too fast for me. I try to keep my modern-era trains running at no more that a scale 50 MPH on the mainline and about 20 MPH on auxillary tracks. Yard/industrian switchers run about 10 MPH max.
Ron