If someone did a complete layout of the main lines and major yards in Z scale, how large would it be?
It is about 2,900 miles from New York to San Francisco
Z scale is 1:220
Your layout track would be approximately 13.2 miles.
If you started building your layout today, you would be done in no time. [;)]
That would be very teadious to work with. You would definitly have plenty of room to run prototype length trains.
I make it more like 18.2 miles, the 4000 miles from Nenana to Florida City.
One difficulty with such a layout will be the difference in the direction of “up” at the extremes, which is 60 degrees. The prototype earth’s gravity takes care of that; but, on the layout, which will be shaped like a part of a sphere, the grades will be something like 58 percent at the edges–unless we can come up with some way to model gravity.
That sounds like one big power supply would be needed, even for the z scale. Otherwise a cargo trailer full of 9 volt batteries!
No problem. Just run one train at a time. But the feeders will have to be about 15 inches in diameter, to keep the voltage drop reasonable.
Whew!! If thats what it would take in Z scale it would definitly be something in O guage. [(-D]
lionelsoni
So if a westbound train going level in New York and and eastbound train is going level in California, they are really going up a grade at each end, projected to meet at the top of the grade in Kansas. Holy cow.[8D]
PS: I did see a show on Dicovery channel about a bridge back east. They said that the top of the towers were a fraction of an inch further apart than the bases, because of that very reason-curvature of the earth.
That’s about it, unless we can figure out how to change gravity so that it attracts everything perpendicular to the surface of the layout. On second thought, all we have to do is to build the layout on an asteroid that is 36 miles in diameter–a Z-scale model of the earth!