Label: A Look Back.
As many of you know, February 14, 2018, marks the one year
anniversary of the blog dedicated to The Omega Scale Railway. To celebrate
omscaler will reprise some of the initial key blog posts for your enjoyment. As
follows:
The Omega Scale Railway inspiration:
Some years ago this writer was accumulating a collection of
various model railroad magazines. After than 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.
