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Subject: 
Re: How long is a length of monorail track?
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.general
Date: 
Thu, 16 May 2013 15:55:09 GMT
Viewed: 
21748 times
  
In lugnet.general, David Koudys wrote:
But, more importantly for shows, invariably someone will throw a switch or
two during the show.  Since we usually have 5-6 monorail trains moving
around, this has led to some spectacular derailments (as much of our
monorail is well above the baseplate level)

Yeah, we've had that happen for both monorail and 9v rail-- never a pretty
sight!

Having completely separate loops offers lots more flexibility and takes up
less space.

Yeah, we debated whether or not the "world's longest monorail" should mean that
it's a single loop, or merely CONNECTED track that ought to count. So if we had
(say) 3 loops connected by some switches, should we count the switches and
separate loops as one big number? Or just count the distance that a single train
would travel? We ended up playing it safe and counting only the loop that the
train traveled.

BUT, I have to say the temptation to make it take up less space is huge. The
amount of square footage necessary to make a layout that's on par with
world-record sizes is daunting, unless you do things like lots of little loops
and have vertical climbs!

I've watched many families try to figure out where a monorail train will go
in the layout, and the kids have fun following the many trains around.

Hmmm... I hadn't thought much about that, but it sounds like a great challenge
for kids, actually. I wonder if you could set up a REALLY long loop, and then
put different color "stations" on it, and have the kids determine the order of
the stations visited. Could be rather difficult depending on how complex you
made the loop!

In the future, I may add a switch or two back into the layout, but for now,
I'm good that they're not there.

Yeah, it definitely makes sense. The switches are fun to fiddle with, but they
do cause a lot of issues as you point out.

Oh, and from the "Learn Something New Every Day" department, I learned from
Abner at the recent BrickFair that apparently LEGO once took out a patent on a
monorail *CROSS* track. Dunno what the details are, but now I'll have to make it
a mission to find out more about it...

DaveE



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: How long is a length of monorail track?
 
In lugnet.general, David Eaton wrote: snip (...) I heard that as well! I've sketched out a design as to what I think could potentially work, using the 'guts' of an existing switch track, but, alas, since I don't own a 3d printer, I won't be (...) (11 years ago, 16-May-13, to lugnet.general)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: How long is a length of monorail track?
 
(...) Talking about monorail for shows and such (since we were, indeed talking about that ;) ).... Ever since the big 12.5 x 12.5 layout we did back in 2009 (I think), I've tried to avoid putting switches into my show layouts. First, as we all know (...) (11 years ago, 15-May-13, to lugnet.general)

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