Estimating Speeds

N Gauger

1:20.3 Train Addict
Hi, I just received some Original Reading Railroad papers & books.
One of the items is a Safety Letter from September 1954. In the newsletter they mention coupling speeds of cars.

From the Newsletter: Reading System Sept. 1954:

Accurate judgment of coupling speeds.....You should ALWAYS keep coupling speeds at UNDER 4 MPH.

To judge the speed of your train:
Sight the "front end" of any car body against a telegraph pole or other fixed point CLOSE to the right of way. Note the seconds the car takes to pass the object in seconds.. (1001...1002...etc..)

refer to the chart below

Seconds for
car to pass
object -------- MPH
1 -------------- 28
2 -------------- 14
3 -------------- 9.3
4 --------------- 7
5 -------------- 5.6
6 -------------- 4.7
7 --------------- 4
8 -------------- 3.5
9 -------------- 3.1
10 ------------- 2.8
11 ------------- 2.5
12 ------------- 2.3
13 ------------- 2.15
14 -------------- 2

Yes....I tried this in G and the chart seems to be right! 7 seconds is a Perfect coupling speed :) But I had to "Scale it down" to 2 - 2.5 Sec. for 1:20
Please let me know if it works in other scales :) :)

---- Mikey
 

Vic

Active Member
Speed

Mikey, Some years ago there was an article either in RMC or MR on how to determine the scale speed of your train. It was done by erecting little mile posts on a section of your layout. The exact distances were given for various scales. They called them "SMILES" and a conversion table was included. You may want to research this further on the mag index on Trains.com
 
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