Kilometers into Miles & Chains

[D400.50050]

Hi,

This is my first post to the Forum, I have been reading the various trips you guys have been making with interest. I have been interested in Railways for over 30 years formally a resident of Devon, now residing in Hampshire. So fond memories of the Summer Saturday extra during the late 80s to that neck of the woods.

More recent times I have been concentrating on the Railways of Continental Europe, Mainly Germany, as quite frankly from a spotting point of view the influx of units replacing LHS put me off..

I used to log my hauls for the UK, but not being able to find them anymore, this June I decided I would start again for the UK. However I still have all my Euro Travels.

As I wish to reduce the amount files, I want to bring them all together in one file, but as most of you (possibly) know Europe operate in KM's not Mile and definitely not in Miles&Chains.

So my question to you guys would be is there a formula I can use to convert KM's into M&C's in a spreadsheet.

I know 1Mile = roughly into 1.609km so working out the miles is not to difficult but when you get a figure like say 69,8kms how would that equate into M&C's?

Any help would be gratefully received.

I intend to start posting my travels from June this year (When I started the UK again) I may post a few oldies from my jaunts to the Continent once I have a formula setup.

Many Thanks
Rob. (Class 50 fan)

 

[yorkie]

Welcome to the forum

Does anyone bother with chains these days?

Network Rail uses decimalised data, which is also used by booking engines etc. This is far easier to use, especially if you are converting data between obsolete imperial and modern metric measurements.

However if you really want to work with chains, there are online converters.

If it was me I would be storing the data in decimalised miles.

When we are calculating distances for the purpose of the 'Shortest Route Rule' we use decimalised data.

 

[30907]

With 80 chains to the mile, 1 chain is almost exactly 20.1m.

Presumably the Test and County Cricket Board could supply the metric length of a cricket pitch?

 

[John Webb]

I'd agree with Yorkie that decimalised miles would be the easiest way to record on a spread-sheet or other data base - I would suggest you do it to 2 decimal places so it's in hundredths of a mile. This won't be far off the chainage at 80 chains to the mile. To get a precise conversion, multiply the decimal part (preferable to three decimal places) by 80 to get the number of chains.

I have a National Physical Laboratory booklet published in 1979 - this gives:
1 mile = 1.60934 km
1 chain = 20.1168 m

John Webb

 

[pdeaves]

This looks a bit complicated and there may be other ways to do it but try this in your spreadsheet (assuming you use Excel):

=CONCATENATE(INT(A1*1000/0.9144/1760),"m ",ROUND(80*((A1*1000/0.9144/1760)-INT(A1*1000/0.9144/1760)),0),"ch")

where A1 is the cell with your km figure. Using this gives 10km=6m 17ch, for example.

 

[D400.50050]

Welcome to the forum

Does anyone bother with chains these days?

When we are calculating distances for the purpose of the 'Shortest Route Rule' we use decimalised data.

Thanks for the Welcome, its good to be here.

I guess doing it in Chains is still in my blood..

Will see how things pan out and see what looks best.

 

[D400.50050]

This looks a bit complicated and there may be other ways to do it but try this in your spreadsheet (assuming you use Excel):

=CONCATENATE(INT(A1*1000/0.9144/1760),"m ",ROUND(80*((A1*1000/0.9144/1760)-INT(A1*1000/0.9144/1760)),0),"ch")

where A1 is the cell with your km figure. Using this gives 10km=6m 17ch, for example.

Thanks for the Formula I will have a go and see what happens...

Thanks to all whom have taken the time to reply