Subject:
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Re: Moonbase: Nailing down Moonway and Rail Standard
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.space, lugnet.trains
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Date:
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Wed, 12 May 2004 02:22:42 GMT
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Viewed:
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374 times
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In lugnet.space, Jon Palmer wrote:
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Having short cars was one of the main ideas in the beginning, yeah.
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It really makes sense as far as clearance goes, but all of the discussions on
how to do a Moonbase-compatible container kept pushing to make it really long so
they could serve double-duty as corridor modules, and using Space Train to haul
them around.
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You might just have a good point there. It would be nice to raise the
race-track but then we have to worry about running into monorail.
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That’s going to be a problem regardless. Even running just two track systems,
the only way to guarantee that it’s never a problem is to run one at
ground-level and the other above the modules. And whichever gets run at
ground-level gets the short end of the stick because many modules just aren’t
built to accomodate track pass-thrus (1). If you add a third track system to a
single layout, it’s going to be fighting at least one other track for
right-of-way, but both Monorail and Moonway have the ability to do big inclines
in a short distance, and both Monorail and Space Train have the ability to scoot
under a standard corridor flange (Moonway could probably pull it off as well, if
you put the cabin or battery box on a seperate car, but not when you’re running
a single car).
If you really want to be able to run everything on a single layout with strict
standards, I think overlapping pathways are going to be a necessity. In a large
layout, there should be enough room to figure out a suitable multi-track
arrangement that permits them to coexist, but probably not on the same
baseplates. In a small layout, there’s probably not enough room to do more than
one type without resorting to stacking them in layers. Just looking at the
side-by-side setup you showed with Space Train and Moonway, that fairly well
chews up the space that Monorail leaves for supporting a module. My suggestion
is to set the standards independantly of each other, rather than trying to fit
them all on the same baseplate. Let the local clubs decide which ones are more
important for their displays. The alternatives are to develop anti-gravity
bricks that will obviate the need for supports below a module at all, or force
the need for large amounts of cross-over corridors that can be fully supported
by their connection flanges.
BTW, one other odd problem I just realized with that neat side-by-side curve is
that it falls apart when you hit any sort of S-curve scenario (2).
1. I’m designing the MichLUG layout for MCCC this weekend, and with only a scant
handful of monorail-compatible modules to work with, I had to resort to running
it down the gaps between them. It actually works quite well, and if done
correctly it’s even compatible with the official track placement standards. It
turns out that the standard exit ports are centered exactly 16 studs from the
edge, so if you add two more short sections before heading into a curve, it ends
up straddling the seam between two baseplates.
2. Moonway is perfectly sized to fit the inside of a Space Train curve, but try
turning in the other direction and it’s the outside track. Curves of less than
90 degrees get even worse, since Space Train and Moonway run a 4/3-piece turn
ratio. I think you either got lucky with the Monorail standard, in that whoever
designed the track seems to have done a much better job of figuring out the
optimum curve geometry than was done with 9v track.
Over the last couple months I have developed a profound respect for the
advantages of doing a simple S-curve. Two monorail curves require 64-stud
centers for parallel lines, but Moonbase is set to a 48-stud standard. Adding a
small S-curve to the end of one of those curves brings it back to 48-stud
centers, so both legs can be piped down the gap between modules, as long as you
have enough open ground to pull off the loop. And it still has the ability to
line up with the official standard pathways. Try as I might with Track
Designer, I can’t get a 2-piece or 4-piece S-curve to line up nicely without
resorting to use of at least one point.
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