Posted by Frank Keenan | Posted in Model Railway | Posted on 19-10-2010
Tags: arts,, auto, entertainment, hobbies, Model Railway, model trains, toy trains
Planning and modeling a railroad is, to be precise, a part of fine arts and a bit of 'techy' stuff with a touch of electronics engineering. Before banging your head with the CAD programs, computer graphics and other tits and bits, stop by and understand the major concepts which are related to railroad planning. There are as a matter of fact, three basic and yet major concepts! They are: THEME, SCALE and DISPLAY.
THEME: You will at first need to decide the theme of the railroad. There are a several questions which you need to ask yourself before you start. For instance, what is the purpose of the railroad? What is the destination and where is the train coming from? What is the era and the location? What kind of equipments do you want to use? What services will the railroad provide and the services will be rendered to who? These are the few basic questions which you must answer before railroad planning is started. The answers to these questions will decide the design and the layout of your railroad planning.
SCALE: Scale is the ratio between the model measurements to prototype measurements. You need to first come out with the answer to the question, ?What scale to use?? Let us make things simple. What is the size of the trains that you are planning to use? There are different train scales which are already there but you have to make several choices before you start the railroad planning. For example, you need to decide on the things like space availability, money that you can spend for the hobby, your emphasis will lie on the scenery or the train and many more. REMEMBER: DO NOT GET CONFUSED WITH SCALE AND GAUGE! GAUGE IS THE DISTANCE BETWEEN TWO RAIL TRACKS.
DISPLAYS: The final thing to be taken care of is the decision on how to display the trains and how to operate the same! You can chose between switching layout on a shelf or a wall-to-wall empire. The former is small and the later is huge. May be you are satisfied with something in between the two. It is your call. The other questions that you must ask yourself are like, building this model railroad for your own pleasure or are you designing and making it for your children to enjoy? Will your friends help in this? Are you going to sell this as a piece of craft? Will it be showcased in a club?
When you have answers to all these questions and you have ample time, space and money (which can be considered as limiting factors), you are ready for railroad planning and make sure that your decisions do not change in between! Simply do it!
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