I was going to say 'Yes', but it is coming down like 'stairrods' now. Fortunately I have returned with my younger granddaughter who has been away on 'Weekend Camp'. We missed the rain on the journey here. Now I have to take her home.
At least I do not have to 'wash the car'.
David
When we visited MR bout 4 years ago, Coaster is how they pronounced it. Got to talk to him while there, and a few others I had only read about too. Great bunch of people. Think that we spent about 3 hours visiting with everybody; looking at all the current ( and previous ) projects too.
Obviously you live close enough to town to get away with that. My neighbor hauls a couple of 55 gal drums to town in one of his pickup trucks. He has three pickups and the fuel drums rarely get taken out. His fourth truck is a an F-350 converted into a flatbed, which he and his son did themselves. The bed was mounted on some spare axle and is now a trailer.
Willie: Ya, only about 1.5 Miles for fuel. Thing does 35Mph. Have been looking for an 'extra' bed just for trailer. Also looking at those tanks you can put in the box for fuel although those hold more that I would probably ever use in one season. Maybe some day it will be done, maybe not as we don't have THAT much stuff to haul; except for our spring dump run but then the pickup will work just fine; abet multiple trips.
I filled a 20 litre jerry can with notmaldiesel 36.20 red diesel is now really hard to get hold of and I needed it over the weekend, almost choked on the price
It surely has been an impressive start!
John I rather you calculate the forces of the cars pushing down on each other when descending the grade. That's the problem I had with a 3% grade. Cars derailing going down the grade. I thought about having a helper engine on the rear as a brake but realized the better option would be to lower the grade to 1.5 percent.I posted this in the EMD TR5A build thread. It probably belongs here....I guess. Maybe under layout builds/design.........oh well.
In regards to "percent of grade".
Most may know this but this info is for those that do not.
Lets start with a 2% slope. Correctly shown as 2.00%. Now, move the decimal point to the left 2 digits. Now we have 0.02000.
0.0200 is now the tangent of an angle .
Most handheld calculators have Sin Cos Tan functions. Most also have a button to achieve the inverse functions usually referred to as arc-sin, arc-cos and arc-tan.
Back to our 0.02000 number. Enter this number in your calculator do the arc tan function and you should now have 1.1458. This is the angle in decimal form as 1.1458 degrees which equates to 1 degree, 8 minutes and 45 seconds.
This angle may be a bit hard to set up on your layout so lets do something else.
That tangent number, 0.02000 is the tool to use for figuring the slope dimensions on your layout.
Take 0.0200 and multiply by 12 (number of inches in a foot) and we get 0.2400.
12 inches represents the base of a right triangle (horizontal length) times the tangent gives the rise, the 0.2400 number. 0.2400 equates to 3.84 sixteenths of an inch. You can round this up to 1/4 (4/16ths) inch rise in 12 inches of horizontal length. But using this rounded up number will accumulate as you add more 12 inch lengths. So........
For more accuracy lets take an even rise number like 1 inch. To achieve 1 inch rise at 2% slope you need 50 inches of horizontal length.
So now 12 1/2 inches gives us 1/4 inch of rise exactly ; 25 inches gives us 1/2 inch rise ; 37 1/2 inches gives us 3/4 inch rise.
To sum up: 1% slope use .01000 as a tangent
1.5% slope use .01500 as a tangent and so on.
If you have a sloping section on your layout and you want to know the percent of slope (grade) of that section of track, then set up a level, lets say a 3 foot level. Set one end of the level on the high end of the track (roadbed, etc) and while keeping it level, measure the distance between the top of the track (roadbed etc) to the bottom of the level. Lets say you measured 3/8 of an inch.
Now 3/8 of an inch equates to .375 decimal and your 3 foot level converts to 36.00 inches. (we have converted all numbers to decimal inches)
Dividing .375 by 36 will give you 0.0104. That 0.0104 number is the tangent of the angle so move the decimal point 2 digits to the right and now you have 1.04. This is 1.04 % of grade. Not bad.
I hope this helps and is not confusilating to you. It is just trigonometry.
There may be a better way but this is what I use.
Take care....John
Did you just sneak math into the coffee shop?I posted this in the EMD TR5A build thread. It probably belongs here....I guess. Maybe under layout builds/design.........oh well.
In regards to "percent of grade".
Most may know this but this info is for those that do not.
Lets start with a 2% slope. Correctly shown as 2.00%. Now, move the decimal point to the left 2 digits. Now we have 0.02000.
0.0200 is now the tangent of an angle .
Most handheld calculators have Sin Cos Tan functions. Most also have a button to achieve the inverse functions usually referred to as arc-sin, arc-cos and arc-tan.
Back to our 0.02000 number. Enter this number in your calculator do the arc tan function and you should now have 1.1458. This is the angle in decimal form as 1.1458 degrees which equates to 1 degree, 8 minutes and 45 seconds.
This angle may be a bit hard to set up on your layout so lets do something else.
That tangent number, 0.02000 is the tool to use for figuring the slope dimensions on your layout.
Take 0.0200 and multiply by 12 (number of inches in a foot) and we get 0.2400.
12 inches represents the base of a right triangle (horizontal length) times the tangent gives the rise, the 0.2400 number. 0.2400 equates to 3.84 sixteenths of an inch. You can round this up to 1/4 (4/16ths) inch rise in 12 inches of horizontal length. But using this rounded up number will accumulate as you add more 12 inch lengths. So........
For more accuracy lets take an even rise number like 1 inch. To achieve 1 inch rise at 2% slope you need 50 inches of horizontal length.
So now 12 1/2 inches gives us 1/4 inch of rise exactly ; 25 inches gives us 1/2 inch rise ; 37 1/2 inches gives us 3/4 inch rise.
To sum up: 1% slope use .01000 as a tangent
1.5% slope use .01500 as a tangent and so on.
If you have a sloping section on your layout and you want to know the percent of slope (grade) of that section of track, then set up a level, lets say a 3 foot level. Set one end of the level on the high end of the track (roadbed, etc) and while keeping it level, measure the distance between the top of the track (roadbed etc) to the bottom of the level. Lets say you measured 3/8 of an inch.
Now 3/8 of an inch equates to .375 decimal and your 3 foot level converts to 36.00 inches. (we have converted all numbers to decimal inches)
Dividing .375 by 36 will give you 0.0104. That 0.0104 number is the tangent of the angle so move the decimal point 2 digits to the right and now you have 1.04. This is 1.04 % of grade. Not bad.
I hope this helps and is not confusilating to you. It is just trigonometry.
There may be a better way but this is what I use.
Take care....John
Donuts woulda helped. 
Troy, here's your song!!Did you just sneak math into the coffee shop?
Did you even bring in donuts? I mean if you're going to drip MATH all over the place...
