Blog entry 2/14/17

Some years ago this writer was accumulating a collection of various model railroad magazines. After that time I was reading an article in the August 1982 edition. The article told how a man wanted to entertain his two children on a long car trip to Florida. What the man did was to build a 1/384 scale railroad operated by air! The air was to be forced in by a funnel attached to a tube while the car was at speed. Later the man built a larger setup for the air railroad. The trains traveled in only one direction due to the configuration of air ports set in wood at a forty-five degree angle. One direction, one speed. Later on I saw an air-rail setup at a train show in Birmingham, Alabama.  Again, one direction, one speed. To be correct, the route could be “switched” to another route if the layout was so built. Again, sometime later I was reading the 1982 article while working as a night watchman at a local manufacturing plant. I had taken the job to give me time to return to school. Anyway, I began to think about improving the operation of the air-rail railway which the editor of the magazine containing the article had dubbed “Omega Scale”. First, I wanted to be able to reverse direction. At home, I built a small section of test track with a double split chamber. Each chamber had the air ports angled in opposite directions. I was able to get the little boxcar to move back and forth by blowing air into separate tubes. I realized that this method was going to be cumbersome to build; could not be made to vary the train speed and the equipment did not look exactly realistic. I began to think about ways to solve these problems and this effort became “The Chronicles of The Very Small Railroad” also known as The Omega Scale Railway©. Please join me as I recount the story of how I was able to solve numerous challenges and produce a working 1/384 scale model railroad.