I have converted my 2 car garage into a Man Cave and I am planning on incorporating my old H.O. train set to run around the Man Cave walls. I plan on running the rails on several different levels (different heights) and need advice as to prevent gravity conflicts from keeping my engine from pulling the cars up the hills. One of the routes I plan on using is a 76 1/2" to 64 1/4" drop in a 10’ metal stud wall. And would like to keep the main attraction no higher than 48" above floor level. Any advice at to what pitch or curves allowed to run the engine up the different levels. If the main display of the town/city is going to be at 48" above floor for maximum viewing (and design work), what pitch per foot (inch rise per foot) would facilitate or allow the engine to pull the cars up the hills without stalling? Or, is my run in the wall too steep of a slope to cause the engine to derail (crash) when it reaches the end of the wall and turn to go around viable obstructions outside the wall? How sharp of a turn am I allowed to make to tour around the city or to tour around the walls of the Man Cave for the Mountain Scenery?
Much help will be much appreciated before I waste money designing the Scenery and landscapes.
A lot is going to depend on your engines and how many cars they are pulling. A 2% grade rises 1" every 50". That 12+" rise you mentioned will take about 25’! I think you will need to supply some more information.
Yes, it would be 50 feet (50’). That’s darned near as long as my folded loop main track! In that space, I rise only 8", and that means a 3% grade which I now (having been subjected to my own folly for four years) no longer recommend to anybody. It is too limiting on the lengths of trains and too hard on drive train components, including the rods on steamers.
Settle for whatever height is accomplished via a 2.2% grade, just like the B&O did 150 years ago, and which was adopted as the ‘maximum standard grade’ for railroads in N. America.
To your question on curves, how sharp you can go depends on several factors related to the length of the equipment you plan on running (i.e. 40’ boxcars vs 89’ autoracks). The Layout Design Special Interest group has a handy rule of thumb that explains what to expect with different curve radii. Check it out at this link.
Note that curves on a grade will “feel” sharper to the equipment, so you may want to make those broader.
One way some folks handle elevation changes is with a helix. A helix is a “corkscrew” construction that has the track spiral up gradually through a circle. There are some challenges with helices - they can be tricky to build and maintain, and eat up a lot of space. It’s something to look into, anyway.
I would stick to a 2% grade and avoid curves, OR allow for wide radius curves.
Like Crandell I found out too quickly a {4%} steep grade was way to steep for any of my locos to reasonably pull a length of train cars. I reduced to 3% hoping for better, but as Crandell pointed out, still to steep. I scrapped that layout completely and started again.
I now only stick to 1 or 2% grades at the most, even though it menat I didn;t get quite what I thought I wanted…
Is this the distance from the far right side of the track to the far left side of the track on the opposite sides of the curve? Or center to center of the track from right side of curve to left side of curve?
I am still in the design stage of my idea. I am trying to decide how I want to setup the lay out to make the elevation changes to facilitate the opposite sides of the room and change in the different levels considering the heights of the walk space and viewing space around the tracks. I have one wall where I am planning on starting the track 76-1/2" above floor entering the wall and slopping down to 64-1/4" height exiting the opposite end of the wall 10’ in length and coming out of the wall and turning around an object 26-1/2" deep and then turning a 90 degree turn 47" away. Like a question mark offset and turn. Then after the offset and turn (question mark style turn/offset), running a straight run approximately 106" away before making any other turns or height changes… Then this area will be in the occupied walking space so I will have to manipulate other obstructions and levels.
So Jim, if I am dropping 8-1/4"(inches) in a hill 10’(feet) long, what size of a slope is that considered? Is that too steep of a slope to make my question mark offset - 90 degree turn previously mentioned?
That´d be a slope of a little more than 7 % - way to steep! For a drop of 8 3/4" you need about 24 feet of track, which equals just about 3 %! You should not exceed this value.
I thought that was kinda what you meant in the OP {Original Post}, but wasn’t totally clear to me. A drop of 8.25 inches in a 120 inch space is WAY TO STEEP unless your trains only will go downhill s l o w l y so as not to derail. AS was mentioned that’s about a 7-7.5% grade and any engine/trains will have trouble climbing that grade!
Again, stick with only 2 percent or less grade and you’ll not be sorry. {2 inches or less in a 100 inch rise}
Push for a steep grade and it will give you grief over and over and you will end up tearing it out for a smoother lower grade like the 2% or lesser. Ask me how I know…I scrapped a whole layout that had both 4% and 3% grades and they failed me had to tear everything out and develop new track plan. My trains AND I are happier with 2% or less !!!
If I’m reading this correctly, you are talking about the diameter of the circle made by curving the track all the way (or half-way) around. Radius is 1/2 that (Diameter = 2 * Radius)
The radius is the distance from the center point of the circle out to the edge. The center of the track (between the rails) is the “edge” of the circle.
So a curve with a radius of 18" will produce a circle of track that is 36" wide, measured from track center to track center.
A circle has a diameter of X in units of length. A radius is half that. We can’t practically deal with circles of track, especially in the real world, so we use arcs of track, degrees of curvature, and radius of curvature. Each diameter length comprises two radii; a radius is halfway across the diameter. As stated above, the radius is really measured from the midpoint of any one diameter line, and extends out to the rim of the circle. On our railroads, the radius pivot point can be placed anywhere, with a radius made any length we choose, and even begin and end at any length we need so that the next tangent segments, the straight track, is oriented in the direction we need them to go.
Generally, if we have wide curves, those with radii greater than about 30", we tend to need deeper surfaces for our railroads, and that can cause problems during construction and later during operation and maintenance because we have to reach so far into it. Hard on the back, our elbows often are hard on fragile items delicately oriented and situated, and so on. So having a large ‘table’ top layout with curves in the range of 26’-36" would mean almost impossible reaches to the center of the area to be built and scenicked. It is one of the great Cardinal Sins of model railroad layouts…building a framework that forces us to use ladders and creepers just to get it erected, let alone enjoy its use later on.
So, if I am running my route through a 10’ wall and the top of the hill (the entrance into the wall) is 76.75" above floor, how low should I be having the exit end of the lower end of the hill to allow only a 1% to 2% slope? To put it simply, how low should the bottom of the hill be than the top of the hill on a 10’ long hill? As a scale to measure future slopes, how low (in inches) should the bottom of a one foot hill be? For up hill climbing or for downhill free rolling hills? I can tell you when I get home tonight, how many current cars my current engine will be pulling. I am at the public library right now.
Thanks for all your help in designing my future Man Cave City/Mountain layout.
One other thing I just thought of, how do I know how powerful my current engine is and how many cars I can add to my train in the near furure?
If you have a 76.75" high entrance, the lower end exit should be no lower than about 74.5", allowing a 2.25" drop in 120" of straight downhill means the grade is about 2%. A one percent grade would mean you downhill exit would be at about 75.76" or 75.5".
Remember a 2% grade means a 2" rise over a length of 100" {8 feet 4inches}. A 1% grade is one inch rise over 100 inches.
Adding a curve to that and you effectively increase the grade percentage. There is a “formula” for figuring it out I will have to see if I can dig it up if someone doesn’t post it here.
The engine pulling cars thing: It depends on the engine and the cars. SOme engines {regardless of price} are better pullers than others. There is no hard and fast rule here. AS far as cars pulled, that would also depend on the cars. If you go with the National Model Railroaders Association’s {NMRA} recommended weight for cars of 5 ounces you may not pull as many as cars that incorrectly only weigh 3 ounces.
DCC is something you can look into. With DCC you consist engines together programed at the same speed to pull longer trains. It can be done with DC, but it is harder and you have to have engines that move at nearly the same speed to consist together so they don’t play “push me pull me” and derail each other.
If you have an incline 10’ long and it dips, or rises, at a rate of 1.5% (one and one-half percent), then at the end of the dip or rise, you will have a differential in height of only 1.5". Not much. Some of us swallow hard and impose double that rate, or 3%, on our trains and in that perfect 10’ incline we will now have a whopping 3" of height or fall. Again…whoppeee…I guess.
This is a serious problem, and which causes a lot of us to seriously consider the type of layout and track plan we can cram into a given area and still have something that is both likable and functional…it actually works for reasonable trains. I have 3% grades and my engines work hard on shorter trains. But with a half circle grade that runs about 20 feet, I manage to get near 8.5" in height at the top, including having the space hog transitions into and out of the grade. Trains need a gradual change from level to grade at either end, and they eat into whatever length you have to work with…otherwise your engines nosedive into the rails or come out of them.
It’s just a simple percentage. If the length of the run is 10’ (120") and the drop (or rise) is 6", then you have a 5% grade (6/120=.05). Just remember to use the same units of measure, i.e. inches or feet, in both parts of the equation.
percentage = ( height (in inches) X 100) / ( length (in feet) x 12 )
height (in inches) = percentage x length (in feet) x 12 / 100
length ( in feet) = ( height ( in inches) x 100 ) / ( percentage x 12 ) + 2 feet
the last 2 feet are needed for vertical easements, a gradual change between the horizontal and the grade ( one feet for the bottom, one for the top of the grade)
i think the best start is to make a drawing of your room and trackplan, and put in on here.
Believe previous followers of this thread, anything more then 3% is asking for trouble; depends on train length, length of the grade and much more.
