Model Forum / General / Railroads / August 2008

On 8/16/2008 2:20 PM Robert Heller spake thus:

So what does that do for me that my simple system doesn't?

[..]

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And why should it be exact? If it looks right, it is right.

[...]

Yes, indeed!

I skimmed the historia, and found some errors. I don't know whether the
article's author wants corrections, but FWIW, here are a couple of
comments about this passage:

"En América, el primer servicio de tren parece haber sido el de “BULL”
estrenado en la ciudad de Albania, EEUU, el 9 de agosto de 1831. La
misma procedía de Inglaterra y conducía tres coches con capacidad para
seis personas cada uno. Recién en 1867 se inauguro el ferrocarril de San
Francisco a New York, conocido como “Unión Pacific Road”."

The locomotive's name was "John Bull". And it wasn't the John Bull that
ran the first passenger train, it was the Dewitt Clinton, on August 9,
1831, from Albany (not "Albania" - that's a country) to Schenectady.

The Union Pacific did not and does not go to New York, it only gets as
far east as Chicago, and initially it didn't reach San Francisco. It was
the Central Pacific RR that joined San Francisco to the Union Pacific
(in the middle of Utah, as it happened.)

The impression that the UP crosses the continent is a common error. Only
the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National were and are true
transcontinental railroads, crossing Canada from the Atlantic to the
Pacific coasts.

Re: place names: It's customary in all languages to use the original
form/spelling of foreign places, unless there is a well-established
alternative, as there is for example for Wien, which in English is
Vienna, or London, England, which in French is Londres. (But London,
Ontario, Canada should not called "Londres" - that would cause confusion
with the "real" London.)

Interesting pictures. Do you have any photos of present-day Paraguayan
railroads? If so, please consider posting to alt.binaries.pictures.rail.
South American railways are not well enough known outside of that continent.

I took a course in Spanish several decades ago, which was good enough to
enable me to read it fairly well, but not to speak it. And anything
other than Castilian (which was my professor's accent) I find very
difficult to understand.

Hi,

[...]

[...]

Lean your bicycle against the building (if it's a building) or have it
stand by itself as close as possible (next to the object), this way you
have something in your image you can always measure at a later time ;-)
Plus: it provides a proportion to the eye (without measuring) and allows
you to measure horizontal and vertical structures (length, height). Just
be careful to not obscure any detail so you can use GIMP or whatever to
remove the bicycle from the image ;-)

Doesn't actually have to be a bicycle, but I have it handy most of the
time and it provides very good measure. You can use a photo bag,
suitcase, backpack, motorcycle... Just something you have handy, which
allows you to measure exactly in real and in the image. So a shopping
bag might not be good since it may have a different size when filled
differently. Or might prove to be hard to measure in a picture.

That's why I propose an object you can measure reliably in two
dimensions ;-)

Please, inches and feet might be your choice, I prefer meter for some
strange reason or other ;-)

Good luck!

Depending on the resolution of your camera, I've found that getting back a
distance from the building will minimize perspective issues.  If you are,
say, 50 meters from a three-story building, the distortion won't be nearly
as bad as if you were only 10-20 meters away.

I'm not sure what the standards ae in Europe or elsewhere, but you are
usually pretty save with American buildings to assume that "standard" doors
are just under two meters tall & one meter wide.  I especially use the width
when I don't have anything else to start with.  Also, here in the States,
bricks and concrete building blocks tend to be of a standard size.  I once
estimated the height of a building by counting the coarses of brick in it.
Only missed by about six inches.  : )

I know that some modelers carry a stick with predetermined measurements on
it when they know that they will be photographing a building.  There's a
name for these, but I dont know it.  Anyway, you would take a piece of wood
and cut it to, say 2 meters in length.  Then paint it white.  After the
paint dries, mask off a couple of sections that are smaller, fractions of a
meter and paint those black.  You might have one meter divided in half and
the other one divided into quarters.  Then, when you take your photos, you
can simply stand the stick agaist the building  You have an instant point of
reference for heights or lengths if you lay the stick down.

Hope these tips help.

dlm

On 8/20/2008 12:13 PM Edgar Warnecke spake thus:

Believe me, I've read much, much worse.

What's the height of the building got to do with anything? It's just
another dimension that can be measured like any other. There's no need
to measure anything in "two dimensions", as another poster below said.
Just measure *one* thing--any thing in any orientation, the bigger the
better, and use it as a scale. (His suggestion of using a bicycle is a
good one, as I often ride my bicycle to such places, and it's a known size.)