I need to build an underground tram system.

[steinjr]

Thanks for the welcome.

I don't think I would need to film the interior - but I'll be gathering a writer's group to go over that. Basically, I want to show that's how people in a space station get from one place to the other - it's too small for cars or bikes, but trains would be useful.

Okay - now we are (albeit painfully slowly ...) getting somewhere.

You are not trying to create a model of a New York Subway or a tram - you are trying to create the impression of a futuristic looking automated people mover in a space station. Maybe something like "the plane train" between the terminals on Atlanta's International airport in Atlanta, Georgia.

On the airport in Atlanta, the platform where people stand waiting is separated from the train by a glass wall with doors. A train glides in and stop so the doors on the train match the doors on the platform, and then both sets of doors open and people board and disembark. Not totally unlike the way air locks might work on a space station. Here is a Youtube film where you hear the typical automated loudspeaker messages: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gRf8L37lrE

Next step. You are not trying to create a set (i.e. something big enough for human actors to board and ride) for a scene, are you? You are just trying to create a miniature model you can film a train arriving and departing from a station (or possibly a couple of stations). Or are you planning to film tunnels or whatever from the train as it moves?

Why the 44" length requirement? I know you say it was necessary for realism, but frankly - someone who seems to think think that a H0 scale livestock car used in first half of the 20th century to move cattle would be relevant to the subject of moving people and freight on a space station may not be the best judge of realism. What is it about 44" that is so magical?

Stein, puzzled