Who among us who had trains when we were kids did not stage a wreck?
In Paul’s plan wouldn’t making the one track decrease in elevation under the bridge help keep lower the grade a little?
I didn’t. We knew that if we broke something, the parents wouldn’t spring for a replacement.
My bother and I used to share a layout, which had a similar track arrangement. One day, my little 0-6-0 crashed into his prized big red Diesel and sent it flying to the floor. Damage was little, but it required a repair for which I had to pick up the tab out of my Sunday money. That hurt a lot!
Hi gentlemen,
my sunday or pocket money was taken for maybe 6 weeks; however the fun continued. Probably in a more modest way.
Happy New Year in good health.
Paul
Who among us who had trains when we were kids did not stage a wreck?
Only thing I staged to crash when younger was putting Hot Wheels cars on the crossing and seeing how far they flew.
Hey everyone - I’m back again and wanted to get everyone’s feedback on a plan I came up with on my own while playing around with a demo version of Anyrail. Some parts of this are crude because I’m still at the 50 track limit of the demo and I had to do some crazy things with flex track to connect everything. I am going to purchase the full version and do it correctly but I’m pretty sure the measurements are sound even though it looks strange.
I started out thinking about the things I wanted to do and built out from there. The outer loop is 24" radius and would serve as a small passenger line. The next loop inside that is a 22" radius which will connect in one or two places with the outer loop and could be a mixed passenger/freight line.
Just with those two tracks, I can have two trains running continuously in a boring oval. Great for the kids. There is also an option to switch to either a town or industry or small rail yard on either side of the layout.
Finally, there is an option to switch to a track that begins a 2.7% climb that ends up being 4" high by the time it crosses over the first rack. I can even make that 5" if I want but it will be a grade of about 3.7%.
Once it crosses the track, it curves back with 18" turns and keeps climbing back as high as I want at that point. Eventually it will terminate at an industry which can be as high as I want in a mountain that would cover the bottom tracks.I can run operations if I want from the mountain industry to the structures at the bottom of the layout.
Maybe this is a case of CAD-to-soon, but I seem to have gotten everything I want in here with even some room left over for scenery.
Am I missing anything here that makes this difficult or unbuildable in any way? I know I’ve gone a bit outside my 5x8 space but I think I can expand slightly to 5x10 if I have to. I think in some ways this layout is similar to the Virginian, I like this better for some reason.
Any inp
hi H,
It would be great if you were able to explain why you prefer your design over the Virginian.
The track going uphill could lead to small station, not to an industry only.
I would prefer the Virginian cause it has a small yard and run-arounds. Part of the Virginian is its staging extension, so hoppers from the mine do have a destination.
BTW i can’t see the way you could build a small yard where you have it indicated; length is not sufficient.
Paul
Hi Paul - there are a few reasons why I like it better than the Virginian. For one thing it seems simpler and easier to build with a bit more room for error. It’s basically just two connected ovals and then the center operations areas can be as complex as I want to make them. It also allows for two trains to run continously which you can’t really do with the Virginian. Depending on what I do with the center areas, maybe I can even have a 3rd train doing something else while two trains run continuously? (please correct me if I’m wrong about any of this)
It also seems that my grades and radii are less than the Virginian since the elevated portions don’t have to climb within the center area of the layout. It may be getting too tight, but it looks like I could possibly fit a two or three track yard on the top, straight section of table. I definitely need to tweak it some more. I would like to add the run arounds like you mentioned as well. The elevated portion of the layout is high enough that I could probably have a relatively large, plateau section where I could have more robust industry tracks if I want.
The one negative is that the mainline tracks are somewhat boring but I think I’m ok with that. I can do some creative things with the scenery to make it more interesting. The thing that appealed to me about Cactus Valley type layout was that it has a long main line for a small layout.
Thanks for the input.
hominamad - I think you underlay a common beginner´s mistake. The Cactus Valley RR certainly has a fairly simple track plan, but is certainly not easy to build. The various grades require a high degree of accuracy in terms of benchwork and track laying.
Another item is the limited operation such a layout offers. While I can understand the need for continuous running, you should be aware that letting a train circle around track won´t catch a child´s attraction for more than 10 minutes. It gets boring pretty soon. IMHO, the Virginia Central is a much better choice, as it offers both.
Your diagram appears to show your grade beginning at 2.7% directly at the connection to the turnout. This type of “hockey stick” grade transition is not buildable as drawn, unfortunately. For most reliability, grades should not change within a turnout or immediately at the end of a turnout.
For reliable operation, you need at least a car length of level track after the turnout and then some car lengths of transition from level to grade, depending on how steep is the grade. Like this:
So your actual grade will be significantly shorter, and thus steeper, than your calculations It doesn’t necessarily mean that it will ultimately be unworkable for short trains of short cars, but you’ll need more careful calculations and some care in construction.
Remember also the increased effective grade of the tight 18" curves from friction: 32/R or 32/18=1.7% effective grade added to your nominal grade. That adds up fast.
And as Paul noted, the location you have suggested as a yard will not really allow enough length to be usable as drawn. Once you consider clearances from adjacent tracks, your industry spurs might be shorter than you think in terms of usable length, as well.
Best of luck.
Just like in the real world, changes from one level of operation up against gravity to another level, such as over a hill on a railroad, require phenomenal amounts of energy. While rail transport is second only to water-based transport in terms of efficiency, lakes and seas are essentially ‘flat’, whereas railroads have to negotiate grades and curves all the time.
Take another look at Byron’s diagramme. Those transitions.
Suppose it takes only 600 hp to pull a trailing tonnage along level track @ 30 mph. For every half-percent rise in grade, the horsepower requirement more than triples. So, if you nicely transition from level running to a very gentle 1% grade, you will need nearly 3700 hp (!!) to maintain the same speed. And that’s only if your engine can apply suffficient traction at the wheels to maintain its adhesion. If it is too light, you’ll slip supplying the tire surfaces on steel rails with that much horsepower. Slipping means “No longer going 30 mph, and approaching zero very quickly.” Better hope your brakes work!
My point is that it works the same way for our scale locomotives. The physics scales pretty well, all things being equal.
Another point, and this is about grades. Even if storming up grades won’t be a problem, or crawling, because you have tons of tractive effort on the head end, the steeper a grade gets, the longer the transitions into and out of them must be. Think about it. With a mere half-a-percent change, you could almost make a kink and your lcomotives are unlikely to loose their footing. Now imagine going from level to 3%. That’s one heckuva kink! So, you fashion a vertical curve at the bottom of the grade to ‘ease’ your locomotives up into the grade in such a way that the couplers behind them don’t disengage and so that all wheels providing traction can continue to enjoy adhesion on the rail
Good points about the grades. I’m going to tweak the plan to allow for vertical easements and then see what it looks like. Is the grade on the Virginian handled better than what I have?
It seems in a 4x8 or even 5x9 or 5x10, doing anything with grades high enough for crossing over is difficult and not recommended.
So it would seem. There is a possible solution, though. You split the difference between the two levels. Instead of making the one track rise and fall again, doing all the changing, why not make the nether one shoulder some of the obligation for clearance between the two? Make the topmost track do a 2% rise and fall while the track over which is passes does the opposite. You get your 4% separation over the same distance, but with grades half that oppressive.
Crandell
Note that the Virginian grade is much longer than yours before crossing over. This allows the chance for a longer run to reach the desired elevation, lessening the grade. There are some other issues in the way the grades affect the industries (cars will tend to roll out of the big mine based on the grade of the branch, for example), but those were probably dealt with in construction.
Simply double-tracking the outside oval of the Virginian might give you a place to start in 5X9 or 5X10. But note that concentric 22" and 24" curves may not give enough clearance. 2.5" difference would probably be a better safety margin with a wider variety of equipment.
I personally didn’t say that it wasn’t recommended, only that one must be realistic about what may be accomplished. Reliable grades do require care in design and construction Unfortunately, the majority of published HO 4X8 tracks plans are overly optimistic in the grades they quote.
If planned and built with care, grades can work on smaller track plans, but they may limit the length of trains and cars that may run on them reliably.
Byron
Here we have an issue that might be overlooked easily. For most newbies operating is just that, having two trains orbiting at the very same time, without any interaction. Also for your sons this will become boring pretty soon, unless some exitement is designed in. IMHO dads modelrailroad is quite different from the one your boys will love best.
On normal double track railroads freight and passenger trains both run in both directions. Some form of staging could make that possible, just as the staging addition on the MR-Virginian. Wayfreight and or yard operation is usually part of the fun on a lot of “adult-layouts”. Like a train from staging to a highlevel terminal and back, whether it’s a freight only, a mixed train or a mine run.
BTW on small layouts trains usually are pretty short; Byron Henderson (Cuyama) made a very wise remark. The steep grades needed on the branch will limit the length of both cars and trains. An engine with a 60 ft coach and a combine is quite different from a train with 5 full body 85 ft long passenger cars in tow. The first might very well be doing fine on both the main and the branch. Those longer cars require more clearance as well, as noted already by Cuyama.
Smile
Paul