I have kinda a wierd question. I am looking at putting a 2 track shelf around the top part of my garage. What is the maximum grade of incline that I can put in? I want to tie it in with my main layout, but the only way I can do that is a fairly steep incline to get it up to where it clears the doors and windows in the garage. I have some passenger cars and auto haulers that require 22" + radius and I cannot fit that on my standard layout. Any help would be greatly appreciated! I do not have any certain track type that I am using yet if that makes any difference.
I am just getting started with all of this, therefore I am open to any/all suggestions. If you would like photos to show my room, please let me know and I will be happy to send some to you.
Well, how long is a piece of string? That depends on what you need. As for max grade, you could go as high as 10-12% if you only want to pull one or two cars and don’t mind the ramp looking silly. What you are pulling with, what you are pulling, and max amps available determine max grade. Rule of thumb is to use the lowest % possible (normaly less than 4%), but you may have to do as the real railroads did, and that is to double up on motive power, shorten trains or blast.
A ramp is a tool. People who use tools as part of their professions are taught that the use of the correct tool for the work is what permits efficiency and longevity, both in form and in function. This applies to both the tool and the user.
Once again, a ramp is a tool. What work must it do? What conditions? What will use the tool, and how? These may sound like weird questions about a hobby, but they are very important if you don’t want to waste time, materials, and money, and if enjoyment of the tool is going to be important in the end.
Logging railroads had steep grades, but they also had special tools. Their locomotives were purpose-built, just as were the tracks on which they performed their work…including the grades/ramps. Terrain dictated what grades were necessary to get to where the collected resources were. If they were too bad, steam donkeys were used to relay the logs down to where the trains could safely go.
You have constraints. One of them is space. Another is the weight and tractive effort of your chief tools, your engines. You need to determine how much of a grade your chief tools will manage. You can do tests on the basement or living room floor to determine the highest grade your trains will work for a given number of cars (called the load). If you will necessarily have to build curves into the grade, you will learn that your train will have to be somewhat shorter because grades suffer when curves are incorporated. Or rather, the engines do.
This is a long way to say that no one can answer your question but you. It would be a sound investment of time to do mockups of various grades and determine “…what the maximum grade for incline in HO” is for your particular circumstances. My engines are not the same as yours, most likely, and my space is not like yours. So my engines will behave differently on my grades.
In real life, railroads avoid grades like the plague. A 6% grade is considered unreasonable, unless something really valuable is at the end.
In the hobby, we have tended to become more like the industry. Most people think little of building a 1% or 2% grade on their mainline, but consider 4% a helper district; get extra locomotives. (Tony Koester had a discussion of his experience with train length, engine power, and max slope in a recent Model Railroad Planning, perhaps the 2007 edition.)
There have always been steep grades for short distances, little-used tracks, and really short trains (as in engine plus finger’s worth of cars). But if you plan to run long trains up and down this ramp, better make it shallow.
I too am building a shelf layout around my garage. I have a grade going down to a ‘hidden’ staging yard under the main layout on the shelf. It’s a about a 5 in drop over a distance of about 6 feet (this is just off the top of my head) but it works out to be about a 6.4% grade. My Athearn GP-50 can pull a train of about 16 cars (longer than will fit in my clasification yard) up the grade with a bit of a slow down as not the entire train is on the grade at the same time. My Athearn GP-38 won’t do it without help however. Realisticly a bit steep for a main line but I was constrained by space, I have seen commuter rail lines this steep in real life though.
Thing you have to watch out for is the transisition from level to incline track. If you do it abruptly the cars will become uncoupled, espically with long cars. I tweaked it using layers of cork roadbed so a 89f autorack could safely transverse the grade without uncoupleing or bottoming out.
Another problem i have encountered is that the metal snowplow on the front of some of my locomotives will touch the rail coming out of staging and causing a short. Still working on a solution to that one!
It sounds like you want to go from a layout which is probably about 4’ high up to clearing doors and windows which are probably about 6.5’ high. That means a rise of 2.5’. You would need 100 feet of of track to make that a 2.5% grade. If what I’ve described is what your trying to do, I don’t think it’s practical.
One good quality loco can pull about 15-20 cars up a grade that steep.(give or take)
Do you have room for a helix??
If you are trying to get an HO 10 car plus trains up a grade with one loco, then 2% (2 parts rise in 100 parts length) usually works OK. If you have serious pullers with straight runs, then 3% would probably work OK. Getting over 3%, train length and power needed to pull said trains is really a factor. As an earlier poster said, real RRs avoid grades like the plague for the same reasons…
Tip. If your trains are short enough, PUSH them upgrade. long trains will dive off, but when fighting the steepest grade in the US at 5.89% Madison Railroad discovered that pulling uphill was a good way to buy new coupolers regularly. the enigne on the back usually helps counteract gravity for short string shoves. but it;s bette rofr 6 cars than 60.
I am trying to do the same thing. I have a layout at 36" and I would like to do the shelf layout modular thing at 56". I am trying to avoid a helix. I am using a track planning software to try to stay at max 3%. I found from testing that most of my locos can do 2.5 to 3%. The advice from SNOW to watch the transition from flat to incline and incline to flat is spot on! Guess what happens when your loco gets to the top and the rolling stock, especailly passenger cars, uncouples?
Wow, that is the steepest grade I think I have ever heard of on a std gauge HO layout. Holy momma that is steep! You’ve got guts! I’d say half that (3.2%) would be my upper limit but I want to run trains in the 20 - 30 car range, and hopefully have them live long and prosper.
Personally I wouldn’t advise anyone to exceed 4% for layouts intended for shorter train of around 10 cars, but suggest keeping below 3% as a best practice.
The layout I just tore down has a grade on the nolix at 2.9% max and that was pushing it for my tastes. If a train comes uncoupled on a grade like that its going to pick up speed pretty quickly and with no guard rails could take a plunge.
Yes. Always transition into a grade gradually. Standard grade engineering 101.
First off, Holy back from the dead threads batman!
When I set out to build our little layout, one of the criteria my wife gave me was we had to be able to run two trains at the same time without the risk of them crashing into each other. In a small space, this eliminated alot of design choices. My kid said that the layout had to have a tunnel and a bridge. In order to meet those two criteria, and get enough clearance for cars to pass under, I was forced into 3% grades. Things work fine most of the time, but smaller engines struggle if the trains get too long. If I had to do it over, I MIGHT do it differently (but maybe not). I FOR SURE would not go any more than what we have on there right now.
I will have grades between 4 and 5 percent on my railroad. Just on the “local turn” route. My tests show an RS-2 can pull 5 cars and a caboose up this grade no problem.
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If you want a grade on a mainline, I would keep it at 2 percent or less. Test what you want to do on the floor first with 1/4" plywood and Kato Unitrack. One experiment can answer all your questions.
Doubletrack Mainlines I made another significant modification to the Atlas 'Central Midland trackplan that would allow for continuous double train operation without regards for the original single-track bridge restriction. This consists of a curved ramp that shortcut-links the upper inner mainline with the lower inner mainline in the ‘access hole’ area destined to be hidden by a removable foam mountain structure. This link rail is a steep grade, but I have been able to run long trains both up and down the grade without derailing. I also included protective barriers on the sides of the ramp to contain any derailments. Two long trains running in the same direction get out of phase due to the difference in the length of the two loops. Two trains in opposite directions is quite photogenic as well.
I posted this on a forum a long time ago, but the photos that went along with it disappeared somehow?? Never measured the exact grade but it was steep. Maybe one day I will discover them on an old hard drive.
Lonnie, necro’d topics are modus operandi on these forums. You get used to it after a while.
Its good to gave goals and a 2% is a good goal for mainlines.
I built a garage layout single track mainline max grade was 2.5% and 2 4-axle diesels could just pull a 20 car train up. Keep in mind I’m modelig a mountain RR with power heavy sets.
The layout I just tore down had 2.9% grades and 2 SD45s could pull a 22 car train up. But I would recommed keeping as close to 2% as possible for main lines. For branch lines, go as steep as yout engine can handle like snows 6.5%. Up to you-all.
MR and TRAINS have had numerous articles about prototype mountain railroads. I believe it was the B&O that set the standard for maximum grades at 2.2%. I believe that was also set as a requirement for the transcontinental railroad. The 2.2% was based on one of B&O’s signature grades, Cranberry or Sand Patch, I can’t recall which one.
