Model Railroad Tables

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Model Railroad Tables

Model Railroad Tables

How Much Weight Will 2' Aluminum Angle Support?I am building the benchwork for a portable Model railroad. I would like to use 2' aluminum angle bonded to the edges of 2' thick x 24' wide pink board insulation panels. How much weight can I put on a 5 foot span? Rough guesses are good, telling me where I can find aluminum angle span Tables would be great! [ Read More ]

How Do You Figure Out A Diesel-electric's Tractive Effort?I am building a Model Railroad with a ruling grade of 3 - 3.5%. Time is early fall 1979 (or late winter 1981). My roster consists of 3 GP9s outfitted with 567D3A prime movers rated 2500hp. 2 Alco PAs and 3 PBs outfitted with 1800hp 251 prime movers, and 3 to 10 SD35s. My trains will consist of 2-12 cars + caboose. I would like to run up to 45 car trains. Most traffic will consist of lumber/forestry products, automotive, and rock from the 3 online quarries. I found an army site with some equasions HPx30= starting Tractive Effort : HPx300/speed=TE and No of Cars = TE/ [3+(20xruling Grade%)]xWeight of cars Also included was Tables for weight of car taking into accout friction and drag like a 70Ton car would be 105 in the equation and a 120T would be 160 Tons. Does this sound right? or do I need to find a table somewhere with similar grades and use their TE Tables or what? Thanks in advance for any help provided. [ Read More ]

Against My Better Judgment, But Seriously, What Do You Think?I really wasn't thinking of posting this, because I don't really want to do anything with it except maybe post it on Fictionpress, but I'm asking you, dear co-part-time-eResidents of Y!A Books and Authors: What do you think of this story? and What genre should it be in? Opinions/answers much appreciated but not required. Please, no flaming. Thx, pearlthebarrister ~ It is a damp, dark night. Clouds fill the sky, making the new moon night even darker, though only a light drizzle falls from them. They look ominous, as if suddenly a lightning bolt the size of four suns might appear at any given time. At a dark, dismal, soaking-wet rest stop along an abandoned Railroad track four travelers sit under an umbrella-covered table. Three of them are meteorologists on their way to a convention in Tulsa, some hundreds of miles away. The fourth is a hitchhiker. One of the meteorologists, a female with dark, limp brown hair and a constant hacking *coff, coff*, takes out a small radio shaped like a cloud. She sets it on the table and turns it on, twisting the dial until she reaches a 24-hour weather forecasting station. A moment of silence follows, broken only by the sizzle of static- the radio has gone out, just as the car did a few hours ago. Another moment - no, two, - of silence, this time broken by the hitchhiker's scratchy voice. 'You're meteorologists?' The woman says, 'Yes.' The hitchhiker scoffs. 'I don't trust weather forecasts.' 'Why not?' asks the older of the two male meteorologists. The hitchhiker is silent, and then: It all started a year ago. My fiancee, Hope, and I were driving to Arkansas for a convention of lollipop enthusiasts when suddenlyour RV went out. Thunderstorms, we guessed- the weather was always bad that year. So we pulled over at a rest stop, one that looked quite like this one. A light, freezing drizzle was falling, but the sky was as dark as it is today-- no, darker. I tried to get out a map, but I couldn't see it, and I accidentally dropped it in the mud. Hope turned on the radio. They were talking about the weather- you know, station models and all that. 'No warm fronts until about Friday,' I remember, and then something about how the weather would not get worse than a freezing drizzle. The radio, fully charged with a full battery, went out,and of course that proved them wrong. But that was only the half of it. A little later, Hope and I were sitting, eating some crackers that I'd packed and talking about the convention we hoped we'd still be on time for. It started, suddenly, to thunderstorm. Rain fell in sheets, pouring, freezing cold sheets--hail rained from the sky like bowling-ball-sized peas--the sky was filled with the sound of whooping thunder and flashbulb-like lightning. Yes, flashbulbs! And I swear, it sounded like whooping and grunting. And the rain, it smelled like spirits, a bottle of Merlot 1992 from California fresh-cracked-open from a wine cellar in the sky. The younger male meteorologist interrupts. 'Pardon me, sir, but don't you think you're getting a bit carried away in your story? I mean, it's a nice fiction story and all,' (he doesn't think the man knows what fiction means, and trust me, he's wrong)'but it's really imposs-' 'Shut it!' snarles the hitchhiker. The young man shuts it, and the hitchhiker continues. Anyway, Hope and I ran to the RV, but it had already been almost destroyed, with many of the parts washed away. Only the floor and part of our beds, plus the latrine, was left. We dragged them over to an uphill slope that led to a small tableland, where we set up a small tent. And there we stayed for several hours. Just sitting there, nay, in Hope's case, lying there. She'd taken deathly ill with a bad cold due to the rain, which had let up some, and the bowling-ball-esque hail had nearly given her a concussion--luckily it was no longer hailing--plus she was already a bit feverish from leaving the AC on in the RV at night, so I advised her to lay down in the tent and drink what little cold soup we had left. It wasn't working, though, and Hope kept slipping in and out of conciousness. All night long, the whooping, the grunting, the flashbulbs, and the Merlotesque rain continued. I began to wonder if maybe, just maybe-- but no, that was a silly idea. One of the last times Hope awoke, she called me over. 'Yes, dear?' I asked her gently as I entered the tent. She looked me straight in the eye and nearly screamed hoarsely, 'Party...cloudy!' 'Don't you mean partly cloudy, dear?' I asked her, just as gently as before. 'No, PARTY cloudy! As in, the clouds are having a party! Yay, yay, clouds are partying! Lots of wine, brandy, spirits, paparazzi, whooping, and of course lots of S, S, S!' She began to giggle and cackle wildly. I called 911. Soon, the wind began to blow, and I swear I saw and smelt smoke. It was like cigarette smoke, but strange. Of course I know now the smell was pot, b [ Read More ]

Model Railroad Tables