this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2026
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xkcd #3297: OH Scale

Title text:

To access distant parts of the project, I ended up building a regular-scale passenger train inside each rail.

Transcript:

Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com

Source: https://xkcd.com/3297/

explainxkcd for #3297

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[–] haerrii@feddit.org 29 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Took me way longer than it should have, plus the alt text to understand what is actually displayed in the sketch

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 21 points 2 weeks ago

Well, he's not finished yet.

[–] deacon@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Don’t feel bad, I still don’t understand.

[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 20 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Instead of building a smaller model train set (1:87 scale), they are building a giant train set (87:1 scale)

Depicted is the side view of tracks and a train wheel in the middle of construction

[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Depicted is the side view of tracks and a train wheel in the middle of construction

I think the art here is the issue.

It's (ironically enough) way out of scale. In this drawing, the rail is over twice as tall as a railroad tie is thick. In a real railroad, that should be reversed -- a rail is approximately half as tall as the thickness of a railroad tie.

[–] Axolotl_cpp@feddit.it 1 points 2 weeks ago

Then thee is me who was thinking that it was supposed to look like:

[–] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 19 points 2 weeks ago

To access distant parts of the project, I ended up building a regular-scale passenger train inside each rail.

Welcome to factorio.

[–] BlackVenom@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

Dyslexic N scalers be like