I am somewhat new to the hobby, meaning I’ve been collecting trains since 2 to one day build my own layout, Had a few as a kid built by my grandfather but now it’s time to start my own. Now I’ve figured out what i want to model and now quite a bit about the real railroad but the one thing I don’t know is how to turn it into a minitaure reality. The line I want to model was 32.2 miles long and I was wondering how I convert that into N scale to be able to make this as realistic as I can. My calculations show that to be 170016 feet long and just not sure if i divide that number by 160 to come up with a N scale footage or what. Any tips or help on this subject would be greatly appreciatted. Thanks in advance.
32.5 m X 5,280 ft = 171,600 ft /160 = 1,072.5 ft. A small warehouse should do just fine. [:)]
Rich
You will need to use a lot of selective compression based upon the size of the area you have for your layout. I suggest that you model only the main cities/towns and industries on the line that you wish to model.
Selective compression is the word, as model railroaders we are limited by a few factors, money of course the first, ability, and physical surroundings. Imagination and creativity are never a factor. Even the most talented and most resourceful model railroader can’t make the layout go beyond the walls of the basement. Unless you name is Howard Zane who added on I believe two or three times to his basement and yes his house of course to add more space so he could build a larger railroad. Now he is the exception to the rule I say it save to say but then again he is probably one of the most talented people in this hobby so in his words he is like a shark if a shark stops moving he will die if he stops building well you get the idea.
So unless you have a backhoe and a fist full of money or know where you can get your hands on a used airplane hangar cheap you’ll need to eliminate some aspects of the prototype and keep the ones that are important to you. Thats why if you ever look at some of these model railroad videos you’ll see the train may travel through a scene more then once on it’s way to it’s fictitious location. I guess that why a lot of guys are building multiple level railroads to simply gain more running room.
Yes that is right. Well at least you get the real distance that would be the equivalent distance in N-scale.
Another example. A real 40’ box car is 12" x 40 = 480" long 480" / 160 = 3" So an N-scale 40" box car is three real inches long.
Reminds me - who was that lunatic (in the admiring sense of the word) modeler who wanted a wye track to turn entire (long) trains but couldn’t fit it into his basement, so he dug a ditch from the side of the hill the house was on in to the basement wall, drilled a hole in the basement wall, put in a pipe with a track inside, waterproofed all joints and filled in the trench again (except for the end, where the slope of a hill allowed him to have the pipe sticking out of the ground, with a cap covering the end.
If a train got stuck in the wye tail, he could go outside, uncap the outer end of the pipe and use a long stick to push any cars that got stuck in there out into the basement.
Now - that is thinking outside the box for ya. Wouldn’t want to do that for myself - for one thing my house is located at the bottom of a hill instead of on the top of one, so it would be a leak hazard, but you have to admire someone who goes to such lengths to make things fit 
To the new poster : welcome. As the others have said - you pick a couple of smallish highlights from the line, and model those.
The parts you don’t have space to model, you model as some tracks hidden behind or beneath something that represents “the rest of the world”. Your trains do something at the mine or the town or sawmill or plant or whatever you model, and then depart for “the next town” (ie into hidden staging).
Smile,
Stein
I believe that the pioneer of this technique was Alan Lake Rice (aka Eric LaNal,) an early champion of HO scale when HO and OO were battling for the, “Somewhere around 1:80,” modeling niche. Joker in his deck was that the foundation around his basement was unmortared rubblestone well impregnated with ancient chicken guano…
The, “Wye tail in a pipe,” was also included in one of John Armstrong’s early takes on his Canandaigua Southern. By moving staging to the, ‘blob,’ in the middle of the room he eliminated the need for under-the-back-yard construction. (He replaced it with his, ‘reverted loop,’ on the upper level.)
One way to increase the number of “scale miles” to be modeled is to use a fast clock. In 1:80 scale one kilometer equals 12.5 meters of track. By designing in a 5:1 fast clock, that shrinks to 2.5 meters between kilometer posts, and stretches the distance between my two modeled towns from barely over a kilometer to a true-to-prototype 6.2 kilometers. In US N scale, a 3:1 clock would shorten a scale mile from 33 feet to 11 feet, effectively tripling the length of whatever main line can be arranged in the available space (which is very unlikely to be an unoccupied hangar.)
I would NOT recommend running fast time in the 12:1 ratio favored by Frank E
Even a small railroad is usually too long to model entirely. Pick out the features/locations that most define the railroad for you. Compress these as necessary to fit your space.
For example, I am in the planning stages for a basement layout following the Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad. At 77 miles long it won’t all fit in my 1200 sq ft. no matter what scale I use. The essential features (for me) that I am including are the terminals at each end with interchanges, the towns of Delta, Red Lion, Dallastown on a branch, and Bel Air plus a large trestle. Each of these will be compressed to fit the space available. End to end I will have about 3 scale miles so you can see I’m leaving a lot out.
Using N scale instead of S would get 7 scale miles. I could double this by having a 2 deck layout, but still I would be way short. The other problem is maintenance. Limiting it to 3 scale miles I have fewer cars, engines, and turnouts to maintain.
It could still be too big. I plan to build it starting from one terminal and use a mobile return loop as a temporary other terminal - if I reach a point where the layout is big enough before I get to the other end then the return loop becomes permanent.
Enjoy
Paul
I do this for every FREMO layout too.
I take the length and multiply with 87.This gives the length in miles. This will be multiplied with the time ratio. Usually we have clock ratio 1:5, therefore I multiply the miles with 5 and get scale miles ( smiles ).
Wolfgang
Folks,
The easiest way to increase your run time is to operate shays or any other geared locos with short trains at a prototype speeds of 5 knots.
For the record, I have added on to my basement twice. I learned this technique from my Dad back in the 40’s as our basement hit almost 100 feet in length to accomodate his ‘O’ gauge layout. It ain’t difficult, just don’t take the cruise, put off buying the new van, and elimianate a year of dinners out at the Italian restaurant down the road (You’ll also probably lose a mess of weight making it easier to expand your layout and not your girth). Oh yeah, having a friend with a backhoe and cement truck helps a bit.
Good luck, and my favorite saying is … “life is not a dress rehearal.”
If you love model trains as I do. let that be your guide.
HZ