Time.
- Thread starter dozerdave
- Start date
skyliner
Well-Known Member
Are you talking about the fast clock on a DCC system? The only one I'm familiar with is NCE, and according to the manual you can set the time ratio anywhere from 1:1 to 15:1. Using my liberal-arts math skills, at the fastest clock speed of 15:1, I get 4 minutes to the hour, which would make a scale day 96 minutes long.
If you're talking about what clubs use to simulate a "full day," I don't know that one. My guess would be it varies by club and practice.
If you're talking about what clubs use to simulate a "full day," I don't know that one. My guess would be it varies by club and practice.
Selector
Well-Known Member
It's still 24 hours. The trains take the same time to do a scale mile at whatever scale speed, so time remains unchanged. If you want to compress your scale to make, say, 10 feet equal a mile, then you would divide the real scale mile units by the 'new compressed' scale mile units and get your time that way by simple ratio.
Iron Horseman
Well-Known Member
As they said time doesn't scale as going 60 smpy will still take the train 1 real minute to go 1 scale mile.
The fast clocks are used because most model railroads don't have the 660' of track between two small towns 10 miles apart, so to make the real 6' distance between the layout towns SEEM longer they compress the time.
So what is 1/87th of an hour???
Just trying to simulate a 1/87th day clock...
Hawkesburytrain
Well-Known Member
When I do have everything setup for operations, I will be running a session for 3 hours and it will represent from 6:00am to 6:00pm, which means 12 hours. Therefore, 15 minutes of operation will equal 1 hour of real time.
D&J RailRoad
Professor of HO
You will be surprised how far behind operations you will get.
Not if you size the operations correctly.
Every yard (and railroad) has a certain capacity to switch, arrive and depart trains and run trains. In a yard, with no fast clock if it can switch 15 cars in 15 minutes, then it can switch 15 cars in 15 actual minutes. As long as you don't exceed that rate, you can set the fast clock speed to whatever you want and if won't jam anything up.
If I can handle 15 cars in 15 actual minutes and I run for an actual hour, and feed 4 trains into the yard, everything is OK. If I convert to a 3:1 fast clock where 1 hour represents 3 hours, and I feed 4 trains into the yard in 3 fast clock hours, everything will be OK. If I convert to a 6:1 fast clock where 1 actual hour represents 6 hours and I feed 4 trains into the yard in 6 fast clock hours, everything will be OK.
Where people go wrong is to increase the clock speed AND increase the train volume. If I can handle 15 cars in 15 actual minutes and I run for an actual hour, and feed 4 trains into the yard, everything is OK. If I convert to a 3:1 fast clock where 1 hour represents 3 hours, and I feed 12 trains into the yard in 3 fast clock hours, It will grind to a screeching halt.
Fast clocks can work fine, if you use them to adjust the time, but keep the workload in line with the capacity of the layout.
Every yard (and railroad) has a certain capacity to switch, arrive and depart trains and run trains. In a yard, with no fast clock if it can switch 15 cars in 15 minutes, then it can switch 15 cars in 15 actual minutes. As long as you don't exceed that rate, you can set the fast clock speed to whatever you want and if won't jam anything up.
If I can handle 15 cars in 15 actual minutes and I run for an actual hour, and feed 4 trains into the yard, everything is OK. If I convert to a 3:1 fast clock where 1 hour represents 3 hours, and I feed 4 trains into the yard in 3 fast clock hours, everything will be OK. If I convert to a 6:1 fast clock where 1 actual hour represents 6 hours and I feed 4 trains into the yard in 6 fast clock hours, everything will be OK.
Where people go wrong is to increase the clock speed AND increase the train volume. If I can handle 15 cars in 15 actual minutes and I run for an actual hour, and feed 4 trains into the yard, everything is OK. If I convert to a 3:1 fast clock where 1 hour represents 3 hours, and I feed 12 trains into the yard in 3 fast clock hours, It will grind to a screeching halt.
Fast clocks can work fine, if you use them to adjust the time, but keep the workload in line with the capacity of the layout.
Patrick
Alien Attitude.
Sheesh.....I haven't had to use an Calculus since College... so don't ask me to solve for x.
Although the answer is probably 42.
cv_acr
Well-Known Member
That's not really how time works. It doesn't scale. Only size does.
If you were actually able to build an entire railroad exactly to scale, and ran at a scale speed it would take exactly the same amount of time to travel over it as a real train travels over the real railway.
However, since we usually don't have quite that amount of space, we compress the length of things. Because the piece of the real railway we're modelling is 50 miles and our model version isn't, we use the "fast clock" to make it "feel" more like it's taking more time to travel over our ridiculously compressed main line. If you compressed a 4 mile real segment into a one scale mile long model, a train running over each at the equivalent "scale" speed (e.g. 50 miles per hour vs. 50/87 miles per hour) then the model will reach the end in 1/4 the time; if you use a "fast" clock with a 4:1 ratio, then both trains will reach the end at the same "time" as displayed on the clock... That would almost allow you to use the prototype schedule on the model.
However things are never as exact as that, and compression is usually more than that, but that's the IDEA.
Time does not "scale down" to 1/87th of real time. We use the fast clock as a purely cosmetic device because our physical DISTANCES are so much shorter.
And yeah, please read over what Dave H said above about scheduling. You need to tailor your schedule to the amount of time that something takes to do, however you measure it. People blame fast clocks for what is a scheduling problem. You don't blame a 1 inch bolt for not fitting into a 1 centimeter hole do you? Fast clocks don't change how time works, they just measure it with a different scale.
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That’s what the galaxy's biggest computer says, anyway....
BigGRacing
Aka. Gary Russell
So an hour in railroading is really less than a minute ?
Selector
Well-Known Member
Again, it depends on your degree of compressibility. What's the distance between your towns, between telegraph poles, etc? If you are truly modeling, per definition, but you have only 20 feet of track between Cleveland and Detroit, you'll have to compress your time as well. Do you want to take several hours to run your trains 20 feet? Or do you want to run your trains at scale speed and say that 10 minutes of real-world running is really X hours on your layout?
Rico
BN Modeller
Oh I'm so glad they taught me calculus in school instead of how to do my taxes, it comes in so handy at calculus season!
Good topic tho!
trailrider
Well-Known Member
And, if your trains are approaching light speed...oh, never mind! 
Time is a huge rabbit hole if you get too wound up in it, so you have to decide what it is you are trying to accomplish and go with that, if its even feasible.
The problem with looking at the distance between stations or telephone poles or whatever is that on a model railroad, we don't compress things uniformly, plus when you look at the actual compression it doesn't make sense. Yards and passing sidings are compressed less than the mainline run is. On a model railroad, a siding is about 1 train length long, typically passing sidings are 1-2 train lengths apart and yards are 2-3 train lengths long. On a real railroad sidings are about a train length long, yards are about 2-3 trains long and passing sidings are 10-20 miles apart.
Lets say you are modeling the 1940's-1950's. At long train might be a mile long. That means sidings are 10-20 train lengths apart. On a model railroad the yards and sidings are at about the same ratio to the prototype, but they are only 1/10 the distance on the main line run. There is no way any one clock speed or operating speed can accommodate the operation "prototypically" across a model railroad realistically because the compression isn't consistent.
The modeler has to just pick a speed they feel comfortable with and then adjust the timetable and operation to that speed, whether its real time or a fast clock.
Most modelers want to operate the yards slowly and run trains at higher comparative speeds on the main track. Actually if you wanted to make the time and distance on model railroad match a "prototype" schedule, you should do the opposite, speed up the operation in the yard and slow down the speed on the main. Since the difference is about 10:1, running the yard engines twice as fast and running the road jobs a 1/5 the speed, would make the operations match. It would look really bad, but the clocks and a prototype timetable would match.
The problem with looking at the distance between stations or telephone poles or whatever is that on a model railroad, we don't compress things uniformly, plus when you look at the actual compression it doesn't make sense. Yards and passing sidings are compressed less than the mainline run is. On a model railroad, a siding is about 1 train length long, typically passing sidings are 1-2 train lengths apart and yards are 2-3 train lengths long. On a real railroad sidings are about a train length long, yards are about 2-3 trains long and passing sidings are 10-20 miles apart.
Lets say you are modeling the 1940's-1950's. At long train might be a mile long. That means sidings are 10-20 train lengths apart. On a model railroad the yards and sidings are at about the same ratio to the prototype, but they are only 1/10 the distance on the main line run. There is no way any one clock speed or operating speed can accommodate the operation "prototypically" across a model railroad realistically because the compression isn't consistent.
The modeler has to just pick a speed they feel comfortable with and then adjust the timetable and operation to that speed, whether its real time or a fast clock.
Most modelers want to operate the yards slowly and run trains at higher comparative speeds on the main track. Actually if you wanted to make the time and distance on model railroad match a "prototype" schedule, you should do the opposite, speed up the operation in the yard and slow down the speed on the main. Since the difference is about 10:1, running the yard engines twice as fast and running the road jobs a 1/5 the speed, would make the operations match. It would look really bad, but the clocks and a prototype timetable would match.
