What scale is Dave Snow's Model Trainz backdrop spline?

The height is arbitrarily in 'meters' but what does a meter translate to in real-world measure?

How high does this backdrop have to be above the ground to get a wall that is a real-world 8 feet tall?

JonMyrlennBailey said:

The height is arbitrarily in 'meters' but what does a meter translate to in real-world measure?

How high does this backdrop have to be above the ground to get a wall that is a real-world 8 feet tall?

Click to expand...

A meter = 39.4 inches.

Hey Jon! Feels like a month of mondays since I saw one of your posts. How've you been?

Dave's backdrops are quite tall, but you can always sink them down to match whichever scale you're in. If I had to guess, at HO scale they are at least 10ft tall. I have been using N scale for most of my stuff (more space to play) and when I sink them down they still reach up to about the ceiling, which makes them about 5 to 6 ft. That's just a guess though. I suppose there's probably a way to figure it out, like running a ruler out perpendicular to the spline and gauging when you think you've made a perfect triangle. That should give you the height of the spline based on the distance of the ruler from the spline. Just a guess though no idea if that's actually how its done.

I take it if the Trainz route is configured for real scale, then 1 spline height meter = 1 real-world meter? Correct?

I now have my model Trainz route at an imaginary 1:10 scale. That means a toy (scale model) SD40T-2 engine is a real-world 7.20' long!! Most pickup truck beds are only 6.50' long. The entire mainline loop is 36.11 scale miles or 3.61 actual miles of track for the mainline. This is a big toy train set, indeed. The floor is actual 4' below the surface of the bench work which translates to 12.20 Trainz Real Scale meters. The train boards (ground squares) total area for the entire scale-model route translate to a real-world 114 acres. That's a lot of real estate to devote to a toy train layout.

Remember in a model layout, the height of the bench work in the train room is real world size. A real-world human would be standing on this floor observing the layout. To get a Dave Snow backdrop wall at a real-world height of 8 feet, I need a Trainz Real Scale spline height of 24.20 meters. Times that by 10 and that's 80 feet in Trainz Real Scale. (Trainz doesn't know I have a 1/10 scale model layout in mind). But since this is a 1/10 layout, the real-world wall is 1/10th of that or 8 feet. I don't have a 1:10 scale setting in Surveyor so I had to do some numbers-crunching and do conversions.

Trainz Real Scale measures are indicative of the locomotives on the track as if they were real-world size according to Trainz. I have to think 10 times the size of Trainz Real Scale measures to put in perspective the size of an actual person standing at the bench looking at the 1/10 layout. A man stands about 6 feet tall in the PHYSICAL world. In fact a 1/10 model loco will be somewhat longer than the average man is tall.

Bob, I took up a new hobby, building kitted scale-model plastic airplanes and trucks since late last fall. My other new hobby since summer 2020 is guns and target shooting at the range. But the weather is lousy in Oklahoma and I can't do any spray painting outside so for now I have to fiddle with Trainz indoors again. I decided to get back into Surveyor again and make the layout even slicker than before. I had the route as a G-scale but I'm adjusting some things to make it a 1/10 scale. Imagine a toy diesel engine longer than your own bed chugging along your bench before your eyes. This thing could kill a human baby on the track if it got up to speed. It's not your boy's Lionel train. I originally started this layout in February of 2018. It's been six years now since I stared working in Surveyor.

When building a Trainz model layout, you have to get the proportions correct. A person standing beside a layout with HO engines on it is way bigger than the loco. Think of how high the bench is from the floor in the real world. HO scale is 1/87. An HO SD40T-2 will be an actual 9.9 inches long. If your PHYSICAL world bench is 4' above the floor, that's almost five HO loco lengths in height.

That's great to hear you're staying busy Jon, there's nothing more fulfilling that creating things with your own two hands. You know, since you're using custom style for your scale, you may just want to use your benchwork as a barometer for you backdrop and walls. Like you said, proportionality is everything and I believe so long as you maintain that perspective throughout the layout you'll be able to convince your audience (or yourself) that everything is still in scale and proportional.

Definitely going to need a "look don't touch" sign on the benchwork, and maybe some safety railing as well! hah

Pretty cool you've got some G-Scale stuff too. Expensive but I bet they're a blast to run.

To make a Trainz layout/route appear to be a scale model, it is necessary to place assets beside it which are that much bigger than in the real world. For example, to make a virtual model railway to the UK 1:76 scale, since the size of Trainz models is invariable, they have to be compared with artefacts made 76 times larger than in the real world. To model in 1:87 scale, they must be 87 times larger. For your scale, 1:10, they must be made 10 times larger. Although I have uploaded a number of assets for the common model railway scales, I have not made any for for 1:10 scale since this is a unique choice.

To measure the height of a backdrop for a virtual model railway, I suggest placing it on a bare baseboard, then using the height ajdjustment tool to lower it until the top just vanishes. The amount lowered then gives you the backdrops heigh in Trainz metres. Divide this by your chosen scale and you have the model railway height as a metre or fraction thereof.

If I wanted to make a backdrop 18 inches high tor a 1:76 model railway, I woud therefore make it 76 x 1.5 feet high, which equals 114 feet or 35 meters in GMax which I use. (This is a slight approximation to the nearest whole number.)

For your floor to be 4 feet below baseboard level, it should therefore be lowered 40 feet or 12.25 metres (approximate) in Trainz.

You may find this of interest: A table of model railway scales. (auran.com)

I hope this is helpful - it is certainly intended to be.

Ray

Bob_Ross said:

That's great to hear you're staying busy Jon, there's nothing more fulfilling that creating things with your own two hands. You know, since you're using custom style for your scale, you may just want to use your benchwork as a barometer for you backdrop and walls. Like you said, proportionality is everything and I believe so long as you maintain that perspective throughout the layout you'll be able to convince your audience (or yourself) that everything is still in scale and proportional.

Definitely going to need a "look don't touch" sign on the benchwork, and maybe some safety railing as well! hah

Pretty cool you've got some G-Scale stuff too. Expensive but I bet they're a blast to run.

Click to expand...

Bob, I don't actually have any PHYSICAL model train stuff. I don't have the physical space for it. When I have been mentioning "model railroading" here, it's only been in the context of the Trainz program. IOW, it's purely virtual. Trainz DLS doesn't yet offer any content of people figures (correctly proportioned for the scale setting you choose for your Trainz route) for standing inside a model train room. I decided to make my model Trainz route and outdoor one with no building. This virtual model train layout in my mind is 1/10 scale. A scale that is large but still built up on bench work. The wooden floor is imagined to be outdoor decking. I can add foul weather, rain, snow, thunder and lightning, for realism. This imagined layout would in theory, if a physical layout, have a shelter along the edge of the bench work for human observes to stay out of the bad weather while watching the action. There would be numerous cameras hidden all over the layout (and inside engine cabs) with a color monitor at various observation stations around the layout to observe the scenery in more detail. Trainz let's me enjoy a physical-world fantasy that never will be. It might cost a billion American dollars and ten long years to construct an outdoor physical model train layout of this magnitude: covering 114 real-world acres with 3.7 actual statute miles of 1/10 scale mainline track. My 1/10 scale mountain (more like a hill) would be about 32 actual feet tall! Probably such mountain scenery constructed in similar fashion to the Matterhorn ride at Disneyland. The height of a 3-story building. Locomotives, rolling stock and everything else would be built and painted for outdoor exposure. The scenery trees could be living plants. Over time, such model trains would take on actual weathering. A line-side telegraph pole in 1/10 scale would be almost as tall as a person.