I’m at a loss for words for a Google search. What I’m looking for is information on an “incline railway” in HO scale. I’m thinking of something like Angels Flight in LA, or I think Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga may have had one as well. That’s the principle anyway, and I’ll modify it to fit my planned layout.
So, “incline railway” returns a great deal of hits, but they seem to all be about the various ways to gradually raise your regular HO roadbed, and also various products to accomplish this task.
Again, I’m (unsuccessfully) looking for information on how to model the “up and back” transportation car that I only know as an “incline railway”. Is it actually called something else?
The words you are looking for are funicular for a cable-hauled incline (2 cars on the ends of a single cable, passing siding in the middle of the run) and cog (or rack) railway for the variety where the trains have big gear wheels centered on their axles which engage a rack centered between the rails. Angels Flight and Lookout Mountain are funiculars, while the routes up Mt. Washington and Pike’s Peak are rack railroads.
Hope this helps.
EDIT… Looks like the two previous posters were typing faster than I was!
There are plenty of US prototypes to model. Your real problem may be finding the parts to build one. Doing a Google search for rack rail in HO, the only current supplier I could come up with was for the European manfuacturer: Fleischman. Ditto for a cog-driven locomotive. Finding a US distributor that carries those products might be an issue.
Two suggestions if an inclined plane like this were to be scratchbuilt:
[1] A sufficient length of flextrack.
[2] A triangular-framework under the incline car to make it level.
One inclined plane car starts at the bottom, and the other inclined plane car starts at the top, and they do “a meet” at the halfway point of their journey. The engine/cable house is by the observation deck & restaurant at the top of the Inclined Plane.
Resting on cement piers, the ties and rails are not lying directly on the ground with a roadbed, but have a supporting foundation under its entire length. In the pictures you can see a walking path on the hillside and a sculpture where the walking path goes under the rails and continues to wind up the hillside.
The “white specs” you see in the pictures beside the rails are llights…
A number of years ago when General Dynamics was big in San Diego, they sponsored a model railroad club on their premises. One of their club members was a real craftsmen and built the only operating incline ( HO gauge) model that I have ever seen. It operated flawlessly. I do not know what happened to this model railroad when GD was broken up. Sometime thereafter I noted that the San Diego Model RR Club at the San Diego Model RR Museum started to build a downtown trolley line. The quality of this work reminded me of the work that was done on the GD incline although, I have no idea if it was done by the same person. I know that this is not much help, but perhaps someone reading this forum has pictures of this incline or additional information on how it was built.