Well latley i’ve been looking through the late Carl Arendt micro layout webpage ( http://carendt.us/ ). And Gn15 ( G scale, 15 inch gauge track= HO scale track) scale layouts have been catching my eyes. After doing a little reshearch I have found a few websites, that while interesting and inspirational there is not much as to the basics.These are my questions. (More pics of GN15 http://www.gn15.info/ )
How tight can i make the curves
What type of locos should I use to Kitbash a locomotive
I have already got a plan in mind for a small section of a paper mill in the northeast in the 50’s. It will have a coal dump for the power plant that serves the mill, a pulp paper pick up area and a chemical unloading are as well as a small yard. Thanks to anyone who knows what i am talking about (or is that writng?). Tips (not the cash type[swg]) and tidbits welcome.
The radius you use will be determined by the prototype you follow. If, as it seems, you intend to use it for an inter-plant tramway, you could kitbash a `critter’ on a 4-wheel diesel or a Life-Like Dockside mechanism. If you use all small cars you can use preposterous radii (<12 inch) but the line wouldn’t have much carrying capacity.
When I was minefanning' in the late '50s I saw numerous operations built to similar gauge. The usual motive power was a pair of 0-5-0s, with attached hard-hat miner. One mine actually had a 4-wheel diesel critter’ running from the minehead to the cleaning plant, about a kilometer on a fairly steep grade (loads downhill, fortunately.)
The opposite extreme for 15 inch gauge is the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch, which runs scale models (1:3 scale) of North American 4-6-2 and 4-8-2 locomotives, is a common carrier and actually runs a `school bus on rails’ for the local school district. Modeling that would require at least 24 inch radius curves.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with 500mm gauge mine trams.)
The site you referenced suggests curves down to 5" to 7 1/2" radius. http://www.gn15.info/faq-layouts#q1
Broader is better, particularly if this is your first time building in such a large scale in such a small space.
Note that for such tight curves, you will need to pre-bend the rail, as noted in that same FAQ
Of course, you can build whatever you like. But usually such very narrow gauges were used only within a plant for a wholly-contained process. In other words, if you don’t dig the coal on-site, manufacture the chemicals on-site and use the paper on-site, they need to come from elsewhere or be shipped to elsewhere via standard-gauged rail cars.
In real life, the transloading from standard gauge to narrow gauge and vice-versa probably wouldn’t make economic sense. But we can do whatever we like in the model, of course, especially for a small somewhat fantasy-based micro layout.
Coal might be one exception, since it could be dumped from standard gauge cars into narrow gauge cars to move around the plant. But they’d probably just use conveyors in real life.
If you are planning to build in G scale, remember everything but the track gauge is going to be bigger by about three-four times compared to HO. (1:24 vs. 1:87.1)
Although this involves a small indoor layout, many of the folks that work with large-scale ( “G” ) are active outdoor modelers, too. I expect that more responses, and more experience with extreme minimum radius, would be found if you post these questions on the Garden Railways portion of the forum.