Surely someone should just think about a bit of basic physics before wielding the H&S stick?
I don't really know why some people are trying to apply full size railway rules to miniature railways. They're just not the same, and physics says so.
Kinetic Energy = 0.5mv^2
If an accident occurs then the energy dissipated to achieve rest (and that which will cause harm) is expressed by this function. If a 5" miniature locomotive achieves 6mph it's doing well. If it's full size brother gets to 60mph, it's a bit slow. Even then, the speed is 10 times greater. A full size locomotive travelling at 6mph would have 1/100th of the energy.
Then, in the full size system, a carriage might be 400 times heavier than an individual passenger. On the 5" railway the carriage weighs something less than the weight of one passenger.
If something goes wrong and a collision occurs in full size, the fear is that a carriage would damage a passenger through deformation, confinement, and fire. At 5" gauge that is unlikely due to relative lack of energy, lack of mass, lack of combustibles and open carriages. Actually the worst that is likely to happen in a collision, is that the driver ends up sitting on top of a hot boiler.
Braking on a 5" railway is almost irrelevant, save that a train can be made to stop in order that models do not become damaged. In the worst case you can probably use your feet to stop.
As the sizes become larger, more consideration is needed.
If speeds increase, much more consideration is needed.
Actually, the big hazard with miniature railways is *loading gauge*. Ideally track furniture would be arranged such that no body part of the largest person can reach any stationary part of the railway from a moving carriage. If, god forbid, someone were to lose part of a limb it is very unlikely that a better braking system would avoid it.
That parents often choose to carry their kids in their arms, and even hold them out whilst on the move, never ceases to amaze me. I also find it incomprehensible that they often resent corrective instruction.
Edited By Andy Ash on 23/03/2014 15:45:38