(06-11-2014, 12:11 PM)Toys_Trains-Things Wrote: I missed the discussion on Facebook. Was that in another group I'm not in?
Anyway... Since when is 'steeper' a 'more realistic' feature of a steam engine. I'm no train engineer but I was under the impression steep and train tracks didn't go together to well.
Ohh well, lucky for me my son is moving to Lego so I don't have to get the new stuff. I can stick to second hand from Yahoo or make the move to Lego with him. :-)
I actually find it insulting that Fisher-Price is toting "steeper" and "faster" as a "legitimate" reason for the redesign of their engines, rolling stock, and track; my few engines with high-powered motors can easily tackle gradients, and the Plarail range is roughly 1:87 scale compared to the real world, which allows mathematics to properly be scaled down to this numerical scale. Gordon's Hill from Thomas and Friends is a 2.75% incline, which is quite a hefty increase; a single percent for an incline is rather easy to scale in real life. For example, a 1% incline means an increase of 1% in the land over 100 feet; ergo, Gordon's Hill has a 2.75% increase with each 100 feet travelled. Now if I only knew the height and length of the galloping sausage's hill; that'd help tremendously. That, and most of my engines are powerful and fast already.
Residential train-afficionado in training, and Thomas & Friends fan.