Does anybody other than me have a problem with realistically modeling sidings, spurs, branches and yard tracks by laying them “wiggly”? I always take care to get my straight tracks as perfectly straight as I can. If I leave a track less than straight, I feel I’ve done shoddy work.
Yes, I am also anal about my track. But wiggly has its place in abandoned track and small financially troubled railroads.
I’ve seen the wiggly done, and it looks neat seeing a model train do what the real thing does over less than perfect track. However, like the real thing, it’s going to be more likely to derail on the shoddy track. Also have to watch center to center clearances so the cars on the poor track don;t rock over and hit cars standing on the main - this is something I witnessed on teh protoype, crew left most of the train standing on the main while they attempted to deliver a centerbeam car of lumber to a customer down a siding that can best be described as ties on mud ballast. The centerbeam tipped over so far that it jammed against a boxcar standing on the main. The wheels were all on the rails, but it was wedged pretty good. The crew tried a few things, then gave up, locked the cab, got in the other loco (they ran the line push-pull because there were no turning facilities) and headed back to teh station. The next day a couple of heavy cranes came by and pulled the car upright so they could shore up the track.
I feel the same - track work is something I’m picky about - it takes me longer to due it for that reason.
Anyplace I uncouple and couple cars I like to have straight, mainlines are hardly ever straight as an arrow.
My guess is this topic is in response to track the original poster has seen which is rather wavy - as in not laid very well.
There is a “trade-off” in assuring top-notch performance of our trains, versus the realism of some of the rickety trackage out there - especially for those of us modeling the pre-post war years.
Personally, I opt for the best performance I can get - but that’s just me.
I generally do not intend to model rough track. It just comes out that way sometimes…
Happened when I was adding remote throws to some turnouts in the oldest part of the layout. I was even trying to be careful as I drilled up under the bridle to make a spot for the wire to connect up to the points.
Anyway, it’s better now. First turnout on the right after the track emerges from underneath the Mother Jones Mill’s overhead structure.
Looks deceptively smooth in the long shot. It’s not.
Note the guardrail – on straight track. I got things as best I could, but it needed the guardrail to make it reliable. I rarely have a derailment, but things do rock n’ roll rather dramatically. I sure would make a bad mainline, but as a tail track/industrial lead, it does OK.
My advice? Don’t plan on this sort of thing, but make it work for you if you must.
“Wavy” track on the prototype looks straight when you’re close-up. The waves are of a large enough amplitude that they don’t interfere with train operation. When you see a photo of wavy track, I’d bet good money that it was shot down the track, from a distance, with telephoto, which tends to compress the field of view and make the waves look a lot closer together than they really are. To make our model track look that wavy, without telephoto to compress the view, would result in unacceptable performance compromises.
I also lay my track as straight and level as possible. Looking down it, I see some slight waves. But it works fine (or I redo it).
Enjoy
Paul
A couple more thoughts on rough track.
Lots of what can make a track “look” rough can be done in how you ballast and blend it into the scenery, as well as weathering over that. My example pics depend more on that than the track itself. Believe me that the track is every bit as rough as you would want to try to operate over. If you depended on track appearance alone to convey the look, then you very well might find operating over it next to impossible.
“Rough” track is relative to scale. Most of us are in HO. Some are in N, where I’d say “don’t go there” unless prepared for frustration. Go upwards and by the time you get to F/G scale you can actually model rough track with rough track (within reason) without too much of an issue.
I do lots of narrowgauge. While people think of rough track and NG going together, in reality the Rio Grande, at least, maintained track to a fairly high standard until near the end. Consider how fast the San Juan got between Alamosa and Durango. It left Alamosa at 7am and arrived in Durango at 4:05pm. It takes probably 3 hours to drive that by a more direct route, so 9 hours by narrowgauge is not exactly slow.
I do run NG diesels, but still have plenty of steam. Steamers tend to be more sensitive to rough track, so anything rough on a grade is going to really impact train length. Hit a bump or dip and traction loss for even a moment with a full tonnage train and you will stall. Fortunately, my rough stuff is basecally on level track.So one of the most natural facets of the hobby that people think goes with narrowgauge, rough track, is also a place that can deal with relatively little of that sort of thing.
Carl did seem to indicate that part of the look is side to side waviness. We’ve been mostly discussing vertically rough track. If one is careful, horizontally displaced or wavy track has a much lesser effect on model operations. Combine that with my suggestions and scenicking to make things lo
I like wavy track:
Anyone who has watched good quality pacing video of Union Pacific’s #844 running at track speed on tangent track must conclude that even the best laid track in N. America has a lot of dips and rises, especially at level crossings or grade crossings. There are recorded instances on youtube that I have watched where I wondered how the tender didn’t come off the rails it was wobbling and bouncing so much @ 75 mph. Supposedly the tracks were rated as suitable for that class of locomotive trailing a passenger set and at the speeds he was doing.
Therefore, at any given rated speed, all trackage is going to induce some wobbling of trains passing over them. This tells me that an eyeball down two or three well-aligned sections of 39" flex track is going to be good enough for my modelling purposes.
We rode the Grand Canyon Railroad a few years ago and on a couple of sections the wobble was enough to cause the toilet to splash water onto the floor of the restroom. I hope that they have fixed those sections since.
Joe
In both the case of UP steam video and the GCR, was this on welded rail or old school 39’ stick rail?
That makes a heck of a difference.
IIRC, high speed rated track back when it was all stick typically required daily walking visual inspection or slow roll-bys by section men to check for loose fasteners, fish plates, etc. Talk about a grindingly boring job to do every day – and the constant worry if there was ever an accident you either missed something or it came loose after you’d seen it…
That’s why they earned the big bucks…mostly NOT.
It’s also why the economics of welded rail looked really good to management.
It was a big part of the reason of the loss of available jobs on the RRs. Already headed downhill because of other labor-saving innnovations, between the Great Depression and, after WWII, the introduction of welded rail together most of these local RR jobs dried up.
I believe the video was modern taken with an HD cam in 2010.
I do my best to lay the smoothest track that I can. Any wavyness I consder normal for the late 1940s and 1950s. No dips or lumps as they can cause uncoupling.
South Penn
OK, then imagine what that would have been like on stick rail. [xx(]
Sometimes it amazes me what humans endured – and along with you that things mostly stayed on the track.
Here’s a bit of lumpy track, and not shot with a telephoto, either.
The photo was taken at Minerva, Ohio, in 2010. There were lots of other interesting things to see, too:
I visited here last month, and all of the locos are gone, the entire yard rebuilt, and was mostly filled with empty covered hoppers.
Wayne
I like this shot (thank you for sharing it). I may even do a scene similar to it on my layout.
Regards,
Don.