Timetables

[simonjackson1964]

I have to say that one of the most frustrating aspects of any model railway, is trying to construct a realistic timetable.

The problem is basically one of scale. If I have a model train, travelling at a scale speed of 60km/h, it will take 60 seconds to travel one scale kilometre. But if I want to use a "fast clock" where one second of real time equals one minute of model time, then that train has actually taken an hour to travel one kilometre, and is therefore travelling at the incredibly unrealistic (except on Britain's railways in the 1980s) speed of 1 km per hour!

The obvious solution to this is not to use a fast clock. But, if I want to create a realistic timetable, that means I have to literally have the simulation running all day and night. Or at least pause it and save the position every few hours.

The other solution is to compress the lengths of things, so that trains that are 12 cars long are represented by a single vehicle (for example). But honestly, that takes all the fun out of it! You might as well just run the control panel...!

Does anyone else have any thoughts on this subject?

 

[gmd]

Greetings from Australia, 
Have given this subject a thought and timetables have been a major part of my programming.
Few basic assumptions for my thinking:
1. I have a ratio of 1:120 in my clock, 30 seconds real time is 1 hour in the model for long distance views, and 1:1 for local views 
2. Everything happens in "normal" speed, only the clock is fast
3. I am not interested in overviews of the whole set, I only use different camera perspectives, with 4 active views (windows) tracking trains.
4. I want to follow trains while passing through different landscapes, but only for a short time, kinda simulating long distance travel using the fast clock
5. I want to see trains arriving, waiting and leaving at stations using the normal time. So in consequence different time zones, depending on the view.
6. I can define schedules for trains between locations and trains will leave a view port (window) and when not appearing in a "travel" view, they will disappear until the time is right for them to appear at the right time before entering a station (other window). 

This allows some kind of realistic "travel" experience and you can simulate that with the EV and the current tools of the Mbs. You don't have to have a program like what I am writing at the moment.  
I build my sets the way that a train disappears into a tunnel or makes a turn and vanishes behind a hill or a building from an active view. This gives you the most realistic experience. The whole set in an overview does not have to look consistent or complete, because you look only onto certain aspects of it.

This allows you to concentrate on your favourite themes of a model set, like a big station with lots of incoming and outgoing traffic, but where the traffic actually goes at the end of the view port does not really matter .. then you build your favourite landscapes and let the trains pass through to your liking or as per your schedule, and so on. 

The key here is moving away from the typical model train set thinking to create a "whole thing", which looks complete. This is not required in a virtual world and Neo has created the tools for it.

Regards
Gmd




 

[simonjackson1964]

Greetings, upside-down person...

I see where you're coming from on that, and I get the idea that, for a big layout with multiple stations, that definitely works.

My issue actually arose from a layout I built but never finished, that was a city terminus station. So, follow me on this scenario:

A locomotive-hauled passenger train pulls into the station and stops. The locomotive uncouples, and all the passengers get off... A new locomotive exits the depot, and makes its way to the same track, couples up to the back of the train (now the front), while this is happening, the carriages are cleaned. Then all the new passengers get on, and the train leaves, and as soon as it's clear, the loco heads out of the platform to the depot...

In the real world, the longest part of that operation is the time when all the passengers are getting on the outbound train, maybe 20 minutes.

Now, if we do this in real time, that's a long time to have a train sitting at a station platform in a model. In the real world, even the busiest stations will sometimes have several hours go by with no train movements, especially at night! But on a model you want to keep things moving, keep them interesting. So we use a fast clock to speed things up, and instead of 20 minutes, the train is sitting at the station for 2 minutes (say).

But now we have the issue of the locomotive making its way from the depot. At a scale speed of 20km/h it has to travel maybe 500m, which will take it 1½ minutes, but as the station is on fast time, 1½ minutes actually represents 15 minutes. So the locomotive has crawled from the depot at 2km/h, by the fast clock.

Obviously, the solution is to have the locomotive come tearing out of the depot at a scale speed of 200km/h.

So, here's my thought. Is there a way, or can a way be created, to use the double/triple speed button, from within the EV?. I suppose one could use the "set time" action, to move the time forward by 20 minutes between each train movement, but it feels cumbersome.

By the way, I don't have V9, because I haven't been using V8.5 much, and I'm short on cash right now.

[Goetz]

Everything on a model railway is distorted one way or another, Simon.
Adjusted to the different scale as well as the limited space.
For instance: You don't build a complete town around your station. You build a small section representing that town. And even that section isn't 1:1 what the real world surrounding of that station would be. It's a condensed image of reality.

So why not write a suitable timetable? One that matches your requirements, without the need to change the overall speed? With suitable waiting times, suitable gaps between arriving trains etc.? That's what everybody else does. Even "Miniatur Wunderland" in Hamburg doesn't use real time tables. Because it wouldn't work. The visitors would get bored very quickly.

That's my thoughts regarding this issue
Goetz

[simonjackson1964]

Up to now, I've generally used random number generators to release trains randomly from a depot (originally a fiddle yard, more recently a virtual depot). This can generate quite realistic train movements and intervals, but with the introduction of the updatable departure board, I felt the need to update it with the trains... In fact, as I said, this was why my terminus was never finished - I couldn't get my head around the annoying fact that this loco took longer to get from the depot to the departing train than the train was waiting at the station.

I know, it's irrational, but I have a certain level of OCD due to mild, high-functioning autism, and this make me want things to work properly. It's why I spent ages figuring out how to make the turn indicators work when road vehicles were turning off the main road, then only included vehicles with working indicators on that layout.

I'm just over-thinking it.

But the issue of having a train wait at a station for the same length of time as it takes for that train to clear the platform when leaving...? It's weird!