I should know this; [banghead] but I’m drawing a blank. [D)]
I’ve been reworking the design for tracks in a small yard area on my layout, and I’ve been trying to figure out how far apart to space the tracks. I’ve seen everything from 1" to 2". My search of the NMRA RPs only gave me clear answers to track spacing on curves; but I can’t find info for parallel (straight) tracks in yards (perhaps I missed the answer).
Can anyone help ? Remember, this is in N-scale.
According to the NMRA page, the centerline spacing would be 1 1/32".
http://www.nmra.org/standards/s-8.html Look at the bottom of the page for N scale.
Don Z.
well, if you’re going to be reaching between the yard tracks to re-rail anything, or remove an offending car, you’re going to need about 2" (maybe even 2.5"). Fingers don’t scale too easily.
Now, if you just need closely spaced trackage, I think the N-scale centerline spacing is about 1" for tangents, any maybe 1.25" on curves.
Thanks Don and Dan. Your quick answers have helped me a great deal.
Atlas “user-friendly” curved sectional track is 1.25 inch spacing on track center which means, not to sound like an echo-echo-echo, you should consider no less than 1.25 inches spacing on track center. Do a mockup with some track to confirm your reaching and car-bumping tendancies.
This was discussed in a topic about eight or nine months ago; I commented that when I had transitioned from HO Scale to N Scale back in the early '80s one of my first lessons learned was that fingers don’t scale down like boxcars do. I had to increase the center-to-center track spacing on tangents and in yards. Eventually I had settled on a scale 20 feet which I felt was enormous but which was an operational necessity; low and behold while I was posting my response someone else came up and commented that he worked for a railroad somewhere and they had just rebuilt a yard and this new yard was designed with 20 foot centers. The prototype finally caught up with me!!!
THat 20’ may be 1.5". Just wide enough for fingers. It happens to be a Ntrak standard.