Train-wise? Gotta be inaccurate ride height. It's not the 1970s anymore, the days of needing clearance for pizza cutter flanges and bulky truck-mounted Rapido coupler boxes are over. And yet there's still plenty of N scale equipment with way too much daylight between the trucks and body. It's a small thing, but it goes a long way toward making an otherwise excellent model look toyish, especially when it's paired with over-large coupling distance.
Right on R.J.! I've not bought some caboose models I'd like because of the ridiculousness of their ride height. I've noticed that some manufacturers purposely photograph their products from an elevated angle so as to conceal excessive ride height. Bluford Shops and the newer Atlas models are excellent in their ride height; they know how to get it right.
Another which annoys me.. are those who use the SMALLEST FONT Possible! As we age Our Eye Sight is not what it once was when we were younger, we now require Visual aids to help us. Tom
You can always go into the setting of your browser and increase the zoom percentage to greater than 100%. It's quite easy to do on Chrome and Edge.
One thing that's always been on my mind is how model railroad scales are a huge mess of arbitrary proportions. Like, what idiot decided 3.5 millimeters on the model should equal 1 foot on the prototype? Taking inspiration from ISO paper sizes, in my ideal world, adjacent scales would differ by the square root of 2, so we'd have something sensible like this: 1/22.625 <-- approximately F (1/20.32) or G (1/22.5, but anywhere between 1/19 and 1/29) or H (1/24) 1/32 1/45.25 <-- approximately O (1/43.5, 1/45, or 1/48) or Q (1/45) 1/64 <-- exactly S 1/90.5 <-- approximately HO (1/87.085714286) 1/128 <-- approximately TT (1/120) 1/181 <-- approximately N (1/160 or 1/148 or 1/150) 1/256 <-- approximately Z (1/220) or ZZ (1/300) 1/362 1/512 <-- approximately T (1/450 or 1/480) Benefit #1: Half the scales would be a nice fractional power of 2, which would make it easier to convert round imperial measurements, which is S scale's biggest selling point. Benefit #2: Stock materials like styrene that have round dimensions or thicknesses in one scale, would also have round dimensions or thicknesses in other scales. 2x4 lumber in 1/90.5 scale would be 4x8 lumber in 1/181 scale. Benefit #3: Standard-gauge track in one scale would be usable as meter-gauge track in the next-larger scale (it would only be off by 1.5%). Benefit #4: A 1/181 scale train would be usable as a "live steam" (1/8 scale) ride-able amusement train in a 1/22.625 scale layout. This also works for other pairs of scales. (Admittedly, this is not a huge selling point, but I thought I'd mention it.) A 1/512 scale train would be usable as a garden scale train in a 1/22.625 scale layout. here's almost every model railroad scale on Wikipedia, there's a bazillion scales This scaling system could be extended to other modeling interests. Currently, model aircraft, model boats, model spacecraft, and other things also use a huge mess of arbitrary scales, which makes combining models in a diorama difficult.
It doesn't help that trainboard's default font is a 6-point serif font. Most websites use a 10-point sans-serif as the default. Out of the dozens and dozens of websites that I frequent, trainboard is the ONLY one for which I regularly have to adjust the zoom factor. And some browsers zoom all open tabs at the same time, which is fricking annoying, so I then have to zoom out when switching to a non-trainboard tab. Websites should always use the browser's default font size for most text, instead of specifying a specific font size. This is a basic usability principle. Then users wouldn't have to zoom in and out constantly, they could just set it once for all websites and forget it. But "control +" and "control -" are the quickest ways to adjust the zoom.
Another annoyance is how every manufacturer of sectional track uses a different geometry (although Atlas seems to have had a lot of influence on Bachmann / Model Power / Life-Like / Walthers). Some geometries (such as Kato's) are better-designed than others, but there's almost always a different track center spacing, etc. when you switch manufacturers. If there was a consistent geometry, then published track plans could be used with any manufacturer's track. If you combine my previous coherent scale system with consistent geometry, then one sectional track plan book would work across all scales and all manufacturers without any need to adapt.
Live steam particularly in the USA is not as scale as most people think. There are some superbly detailed locomotives costing in the hundreds of thousands of dollars that are of interesting proportions. Most 7.5" gauge live steamers are built to 1/8th scale ...... that is divide the full size by 8 and there is your dimension. But 7.5" gauge track is not one eighth ...... not by a long shot. 4 foot, 8.5 inches divided by 8 equals a track width of 7.0625 inches. On my first trip to Train Mountain in Oregon I thought some of the larger locos such as Berkshires and Challengers looked slightly low ...... I do mean incredibly slight. But since dad was building his C&O K4 I was quite familiar with how such a loco would look. I put it down to such a gigantic live steam railroad just making the locomotives look small. Some of the builders explained that the locos were indeed wider than they should be as their length and height was in fact 1/8th. The width of the engines ended up being 1/7.533. Don't get me wrong ... these are fantastic locos that run wonderfully and worth every cent and then some. In Australia the track gauge is 7.25" and the locos are not 1/8th. They are built to 1/7.793 ........ there's a nice awkward number requiring regular batteries for the calculator.
Some places run 1/8-scale equipment on 5" narrow gauge, too, which would work out to meter gauge at that scale.
How do you scroll down a page like here on TB with a touchpad ??? I would take a guess that if you hold down the 'ctrl' key when you do whatever you do to scroll down a page on a laptop would do the same thing as using a mouse with a 'scroll wheel'. Just a guess... BTW...I had desktop computers for years. my son finally talked me into a laptop. I could NEVER get used to using a touchpad. I have a wireless mouse hooked to this laptop and have the 'touchpad' turned off... My 'touchpad' is now my coffee cup holder...
