RJS1977 Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 I don't know how the longer imperial units originated, but the smaller units (inch, foot, and yard) relate to the distance from the thumb knuckle to the end of the thumb, the length of the foot, and the length of a stride. Obviously these vary from person to person, but they at least allow approximate measurements to be undertaken without the need of a ruler or measuring wheel. (Along with the archaic cubit, which is the distance from the elbow to the end of the index finger). On the other hand, the metre is defined as the one ten millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator on the line of longitude passing through Paris! ;-) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJS1977 Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 There we go! I got it wrong. The correct measurement is closer to 15000mm, not 2000 mm as I thought (the converter, WordsworthScales, had written out the 12000mm for H0 underneath, and I neglected to see the '1' before it. By the way, do you have some details of Aberystwyth? Books and books of them - what do you want? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Harlequin Posted October 31, 2017 RMweb Gold Share Posted October 31, 2017 There we go! I got it wrong. The correct measurement is closer to 15000mm, not 2000 mm as I thought (the converter, WordsworthScales, had written out the 12000mm for H0 underneath, and I neglected to see the '1' before it. By the way, do you have some details of Aberystwyth? You're still about 30% out. 5280 feet equates to 21.12 metres in 4mm OO scale. Remember OO scale is 4mm (model) to the foot (real world) and HO is 3.5mm (model) to the foot (real world) - so you can't use an HO scale converter to get accurate distances for a OO scale model. (Have you measured the space for your layout yet?) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Winterbury Posted October 31, 2017 Author Share Posted October 31, 2017 Of your layout, RJS. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Winterbury Posted October 31, 2017 Author Share Posted October 31, 2017 It's a multi-scale converter for everything from Z Scale to 'Dolls' House' (1:12) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete the Elaner Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 It's a multi-scale converter for everything from Z Scale to 'Dolls' House' (1:12) Why don't you just work in Imperial, since your first measurement is in miles & you previously mentioned board sizes in feet. 1 mile is about 69½ feet in 00. If you start dealing with something like a 9'6" wheelbase, then it is worth converting to metric. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJS1977 Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 Of your layout, RJS. It's taken various forms over the years - Mark 1 was a 10' x 6' L-shape round two sides of a teenage bedroom (and even then the track plan was refined a few times!). Mark 2a - 10' x 18" - platform and goods reception roads only. Mark 2b - 11'6" x 3' (addition of 18" length for the station building and 18" width for the goods yard. Mark 2c - approx 16' long with a 45 degree bend in it. Included the loco shed, turntable, coaling stage, bridge over the Rheidol on the Carmarthen line, Vale of Rheidol exchange siding and Devil's Bridge station. - the ultimate extent of the layout in any form. Mark 2d - approx 22' long with a further 90 degree bend round the bay window to incorporate Aberffrwd station and the curve past the ruined water mill outside DB. Mark 2e - 11'6 x 10' L-shape necessitated by a change of residence.Standard gauge section unchanged apart from changing the 45 degree bend to 90 degrees. Aberffwd and the mill curve removed and a model of the narrow gauge Rheidol bridge inserted to allow access to windows. Model of the old VoR sheds also inserted albeit in the wrong place! Although I sketched out various plans to extend further, these were always stymied by the difficulty of bridging across the wardrobe door on a 90 degree bend! Mark 2f - currently in abeyance following a further change of address (awaiting delivery of two new boards by my father) but will be an 11'6 x 8' U-shape. So redrawing track plans etc will take some time and will probably require a thread to itself! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Winterbury Posted November 1, 2017 Author Share Posted November 1, 2017 Thanks, RJS! Can you please send me the track plans for every one of them save for Mk2a and Mk2b please? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pacific231G Posted November 1, 2017 Share Posted November 1, 2017 (edited) I don't know how the longer imperial units originated, but the smaller units (inch, foot, and yard) relate to the distance from the thumb knuckle to the end of the thumb, the length of the foot, and the length of a stride. Obviously these vary from person to person, but they at least allow approximate measurements to be undertaken without the need of a ruler or measuring wheel. (Along with the archaic cubit, which is the distance from the elbow to the end of the index finger). On the other hand, the metre is defined as the one ten millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator on the line of longitude passing through Paris! ;-) The metre was originally defined as 1/10M of that distance but the calculation was always somewhat out so it came to be simply the length between two marks on a metal rod, latterly the standard metre kept at The International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sevre Paris. Nowadays it's the distance light travels, in a vacuum, in 1/299,792,458 seconds as measured by a particular atomic clock which means that it can be recreated anywhere.The kilogramme was orignaly defined as the mass of a cubic decimetre of water but that was soon replaced by a lump of metal and it's still based on the weight of the "Grande K" a lump of platinum-iridium kept in the Inernational Bureau. This is an unsatisfactory situation for science as that mass has changed very slightly over time as atoms have been lost (about the mass of a speck of dust in 100 years) It looks like the Grande K may be finally retired next year to be replaced by a reproducible definition derived from Planck's constant. The Roman mile was based on a mille a thousand marched double (i.e. left right) paces but the imperial statute mile is rather longer than that. The acre is 1/640 of a square mile, originally a furlong long and a chain wide and supposedly based nominally on the area of land that could be ploughed by oxen in a day and the furlong was the length of a furrow that an ox could plough before resting. That must have been a pretty vague definition as it would depend on the nature of the soil so in England statutory definitions were introduced from Edward 1st onwards. Imperial measures are now of course based entirely on S.I. units so an inch is 2.54cms by definition not aproximation.For modelling purposes that's the one conversion factor that along with some of the scale ratios (e.g. 1:87) I don't have to look up. For rough and ready aproximations imperial measures do often seem more convenient and I still tend to use a foot grid for layout planning though nowadays often based on a "metric foot" (30cms) I have found though that for portable baseboards 4ft long is a bit unwieldy and a bit long to fit in many cars while 3ft is slightly too short for trackwork so I'm tending towards metre long baseboards. . Edited November 1, 2017 by Pacific231G 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Winterbury Posted November 2, 2017 Author Share Posted November 2, 2017 RJS, can you please send them over? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJS1977 Posted November 2, 2017 Share Posted November 2, 2017 RJS, can you please send them over? Ed Like I say, it will take a while. I don't (think) I have paper copies, so I will need to draw them up in SCARM or similar, which isn't a five minute job. If/when I get them done, I will start a new thread for them. 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Winterbury Posted November 3, 2017 Author Share Posted November 3, 2017 Ok, I didn't know that, thanks! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJS1977 Posted November 3, 2017 Share Posted November 3, 2017 Thread started here with Mks 1 and 2a: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/127777-aberystwyth-rheidol-valley/&do=findComment&comment=2911415 Other versions will be added later as/when time permits. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mightbe Posted November 5, 2017 Share Posted November 5, 2017 I usually work in metric because I feel imperial is awkward & really quite bizarre. I found it quite shocking at how many people don't know how far a mile is & many of these were arguing with me that it made more sense than metric! A mile is 1760 yards. I was taught this when I was a child but never knew where it came from, so I did some research to find out: I don't believe many people consider miles in terms of yards; it's certainly one awkward number leading to another awkward number. At least if you think in terms of feet you have a fairly tangible unit to base things off of, with a single preposterous leap to the next usable unit (the mile). Yards seem a complete waste of a unit to me and I don't know why anyone would use them regularly outside fixed conventions in sporting events.. As someone reared thoroughly on imperial measurements, a room is about the smallest object I can readily consider in terms of meters. There's certainly an upper threshold of 'immediate comprehensibility' too, just as with yards. There is no 'right' answer; humans are perfectly capable of considering objects in whatever units we happen to be accustomed to. It doesn't necessarily make one way of thinking 'inferior' in itself, contrary to what polemicists are fond of saying. Quentin Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Winterbury Posted November 5, 2017 Author Share Posted November 5, 2017 Thanks very much! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Winterbury Posted November 5, 2017 Author Share Posted November 5, 2017 How big was Marks 2c and 2d? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Winterbury Posted November 5, 2017 Author Share Posted November 5, 2017 And, considering there was a model of a Narrow gauge location, Devil's Bridge, did you actually have a multi-gauge layout for 2c??? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Winterbury Posted November 5, 2017 Author Share Posted November 5, 2017 I realise these questions may be quite odd, but I want to know if anyone has an OS 25 Inch track plan of Weymouth station? I was looking on the National Library of Scotland website, but that just so happens to be a place they don't have a map of... Also, does anyone know where I can get a soldering starter activity? I.e. A kit of some sort. The last thing I want to know is does anyone have any idea as to where I can get bogie coach kits? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium iands Posted November 5, 2017 RMweb Premium Share Posted November 5, 2017 I don't believe many people consider miles in terms of yards; it's certainly one awkward number leading to another awkward number. At least if you think in terms of feet you have a fairly tangible unit to base things off of, with a single preposterous leap to the next usable unit (the mile). Yards seem a complete waste of a unit to me and I don't know why anyone would use them regularly outside fixed conventions in sporting events.. As someone reared thoroughly on imperial measurements, a room is about the smallest object I can readily consider in terms of meters. There's certainly an upper threshold of 'immediate comprehensibility' too, just as with yards. There is no 'right' answer; humans are perfectly capable of considering objects in whatever units we happen to be accustomed to. It doesn't necessarily make one way of thinking 'inferior' in itself, contrary to what polemicists are fond of saying. Quentin Of course the difficulty in the real world is when viewing a signalling scheme plan for a resignalling scheme where measurements are sometimes stated as, for example, "14.25 MP (fourteen and a quarter mile post) plus 108 metres"! A bit of careful conversion is always required when working out cable routes and cable lengths etc. Regards, Ian. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJS1977 Posted November 5, 2017 Share Posted November 5, 2017 And, considering there was a model of a Narrow gauge location, Devil's Bridge, did you actually have a multi-gauge layout for 2c??? Approximate measurements for Marks 2c and 2d given in the earlier post. I posted 2c in my thread last night and will post 2d shortly. Yes, 2c/2d/2e were multi-gauge, but as they were based around Aberystwyth in the 1930s, they didn't follow the current station arrangement as the current VoR platforms were used by standard gauge back then. I set up the other thread in part to help keep this thread clear for *your* layout, so please post any questions about my layouts in my thread :-) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Winterbury Posted November 5, 2017 Author Share Posted November 5, 2017 Thanks Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Winterbury Posted November 6, 2017 Author Share Posted November 6, 2017 Does anyone have any ideas for a terminus and through station? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Winterbury Posted November 8, 2017 Author Share Posted November 8, 2017 Could there please be some help on the matter, please? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grovenor Posted November 8, 2017 Share Posted November 8, 2017 After 398 posts the help required is still totally lacking detail, try searching the forum for 'terminus' or 'through station' there are many discussions of them already. Regards Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mightbe Posted November 8, 2017 Share Posted November 8, 2017 (edited) It's not clear whether you want both a terminus and a through station or whether you want either. I can't go through the whole thread at the moment; I see on the first page say you don't want a small branch line with nothing happening, and that your stock list apparently implies some Anglo-French all-period super-railway. These two statements, regardless of how they're combined, do not seem very elucidating. Can you summarize what you want in terms of: -date or period -railway companies of interest -region -urban or rural -degree of compactness -service patterns Failing that, I don't think I can be of much help. If you just want some ideas for track layouts, here are a couple smallish ones I've been fiddling with: Hayes (compact suburban 2-platform terminus) Sandgate branch (short double-tracked branch off the SEML with a terminus and through station) EDIT: I've had a second thought; perhaps name some layouts you would like to emulate Quentin Edited November 8, 2017 by mightbe Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts