Ok Guys Most of you know I am in N scale. My question is on my mine layout I am Building( I will have the layout design up tomorrow) What would my grade be if I am going from 0 to 2.5" in about 2.5-3 feet? I am ok with math but this one has me stumped.
Curt
Grade= rise/run * 100 (to make it a percentage). So 2.5"/36"*100= 6.94%
Not a good plan. Although for a mine layout it might work depending on what you are planning to drag up that hill.
That’s not a grade but rather a ski slope. LOL! Just kidding. That’s way too steep for me. My max was 3% grade for my new layout. It took some figuring to plan the layout and grades but careful planning can pay off big. You probably want to figure out another way to accomplish that climb in more than 2-3 feet. Good luck!
Ok so if I move it to 2" which will clear most if not all the box cars as well as all the engines I will run, I will have a 5.5% maxium grade. The layout is set in the Colorado mountians and is a mining camp so the 5% is not un heard of since this is a spur track going up to the mine and not on the main line I think it will be ok.
All I plan on running up the grade is empty cars and mabye a couple box cars at a time with supplies. I do plan on getting a couple shays to work the grade and my 2-8-0, and mabye a 2-8-2 on the main with an occasional excursion when the shays are in the shop. my max grade on the main is going to be 3% when I get my large layout built. I am just starting with baby steps as We live in an appartment and dont have a lot of space. Though I will have a couple trestles and a river with a small old time mine. The mine kit I have is the JV Models burnt river mine. I have yet to come up with a name for my mine but I am making a fictional railroad set in the colorado rockies. I will see if I can get the layout up today as I have to run home for a few min. Any way thanks for the equation.
Curt
Curt, tank engines and the geared types were designed to work in the 0-12% range generally. The couldn’t haul butt due to their designs and the conditions in which they operated, but that was a good thing! So, they hammered away, belching smoke and crashing steam into their cylinders to get heavy logging cars up over grades, and then back down them. I have personally been in the cab of a moving 2-8-2T Baldwin with superheater that had a placard on the backhead with a warning to not let the water level in the boiler dip below a line on the sight glass when climbing 9% grades,…so there you are.
If you intend to constrain yourself as you describe in your earlier post, then do as you had hoped, and keep your grade. Later, you could even thrill yourself and onlookers by having a bigger monster do a slow roll up that grade…just cuz.
Ok guys here is the layout;
This is a far cry from the origional layout I had set up. You can see the pics of that arrangement here,
http://public.fotki.com/curtw944/my_n_scale_layout/
Any thoughts would be appericated, Btw the track outside of the table boundries are in a tunnel under the second deck. For those who will ask I used Atlas track designer. Most of the sectional track you see will be flex track on the layout. Thanks for looking,
Curt
P.S. this is a 30"x48" layout in N loosely based on the possum valley RR that I saw in an issue of Nscale. http://simonet.club.fr/Poss_us.htm
ok, so my 7.4% grade is insane?
maybe
Might be unless they are using it as a roller coaster track, lol. I am going to see what fun we can have with my grade. My main concern now is how I am going to set up the incline. I have foam down on the table top and think I am going to do a sudo cookie cuter plan. I am going to try to work on this friday and saturday. to see what the table looks like right now imagine the layout with out any track that is here http://public.fotki.com/curtw944/my_n_scale_layout/ I will get fresh pics this weekend.
Curt
I am in N scale and have found that grades on my layout I can barely even see tend to slow my trains. N scale can be touchy about these things.