I stopped in at Wally World and bought 2 closeout giant Hoppy brand RV levels for $7.00 each. I put them back to back and attached them via the bottom with hardware mending plates and flathead screws. The mending plates I had sticking out past the ends. I bent the mending plates a little and drilled them for a 1/8" bolt. I used washers for spacers and found some unused Weaver plastic trucks and put them on the ends. Then I took 2 pieces of 2x4 and attached them together to get 100" of length with a short section of plywood on top to rest the car. I drilled this long 2x4 thing at one end and drilled a leg on the layout as a pivot point. At the other end I sat on the floor with the car resting on homemade board/artificial grade. This RV level is the type with a steel ball in it instead of a bubble. I found that the ball did not move around free enough to make this devise accurate. I’m sure there are out there somewhere a digital devise to measure a grade but I’m sure its hundreds of dollars. I want to have a RR car on my layout to measure the grade. Anyone else have any better ideas? I can take pictures of it and email it to someone who can post it. I’ve never been successfull at posting pictures on here. PM me with your email. I will be working from 5pm to about 9:30pm central time and will be back on the computer later tonight.
What you are asking for is a very precise measurement.
1% slope = 1" rise / 100" run or (inv tangent) rise/run = .57 degrees,
2% slope = 2" rise / 100" run = 1.14 degrees.
3% slope = 3" rise / 100" run = 1.71 degrees.
Best bet would be an angle sensor module mounted on a flat.
Kurt
I did a quikie search of Harbor Freight-- found a nice digital angle/slope scale for 29.99.
hope you find what you need–
I found a discussion about the Harbor Freight meter that gave its accuracy as .3 degrees, which is a little over .5 percent of grade. That may be a little coarse. The Wixey gauge, which it seems to be a knockoff of, is said to be accurate to .1 degree, or about .17 percent.
A few years ago, I designed a GPS grade measuring system that went to the FRA that was accurate to .1 percent. Unfortunately, to be that good with O-scale models, we would need a GPS system more accurate by a factor of 48. The Plasticville engineers have their work cut out for them!
Here’s my take on a low-tech meter: Suspend a rigid pendulum, perhaps with a knife-edge bearing, a couple of inches above the floor at one end of a car, free to swing in the fore-aft direction. Attach a light rigid horizontal pointer, perhaps of aluminum, to the pendulum, extending 10 inches to the other end of the car. At the end of the pointer, mount a scale marked in .1-inch increments, perhaps cut from a small decimal-inch ruler. Calibrate the meter by bending the pointer until the sum of readings, up and down from the middle of the scale, is zero when the car is turned end-for-end on the track.