About a month ago I superelevated a 16 1/4" radius turn (this is N scale BTW) with .020" styrene strips. This is about 3.2 scale inches. After running some trains over it I was not happy with the amount of superelevation. I couldn’t really see any lean.
So, I ripped the track up and started over. This time I used .030" styrene strips. This comes out to 4.8 scale inches. I think the prototype (CSX) doesn’t use anything more than 4" for superelevation. Now that I look at the superelevation I’m not sure if I over did it or not. So, what do y’all think? Too much? (sorry for the blurry pics)
Appearance is not as important as function. When you begin to pull a long train around the curve, it may derail toward the inside of the curve due to the additional stress placed upon the wheel flanges against the inner rail. If you don’t have this problem, then the amount of superelevation you have is okay.
I second what Cacole said about how it works. I tried to do some of that on my stuff (HO) but it didn’t turn out nearly as well as that. I really like the way it looks and think you did good.
The CSX mainline is near me. There is a superelevated curve that turns eastward that resembles the curve in your photo. I enjoy watching CSX and Amtrak trains really “leeeean” into that curve at speed. You can really hear those wheels squealing.
I guess I’ll keep it how it is. I just want to avoid the Daytona super speedway look. Unfortunately I don’t a long string of cars to test the curve out. The SD70M and a single N&W caboose are the only pieces of rolling stock I own. Maybe in a year or two I’ll have that fleet together!
I superelevated on my first layout, and although I liked it at first, I later came to feel that it was a bit much. So, I hope you won’t be unhappy if I say that I find what you show to be a bit much. I would have left it at 20 thou.
It’s not cast in concrete, so you can always change it if you decide that it is too much.
Thanks for replying selector. That’s exactly what I want to avoid. Being happy until ballast and scenery are in, and then having to rip more up than just track. It looks good from a few angles, but if you look at the loco from a different spot it looks ready to fall over. [sigh] I’ll do a few more tests before making a decision. Sometimes this hobby is very frustrating.
It looks a bit exaggerated to me, but it’s not grossly overdone. Why not work on another area of the layout for a bit, and see what you think in a few weeks or a month? If you’re still uncertain then, change it back.
It looks to me like you’ve super-elevated on top of the roadbed… I suspect that you will get a very different appearance if you can raise the roadbed. I don’t know what the result will be.
I suspect that you might get a more clear impression if you raise both roads the same adn put a train on each road. Okay, one will hide the other a bit… but I think that it will give you more information to work on.
Raising the bed will mean less ballasting which has got to be good. [8D]
With both roads superelevated your ballast profile is likely to be an italic M if the lower rails are at the same height. This will really make the picture. You might find that if you ballast a section this way the elevation of the outer rails will show up a lot more with less actual elevation. This is a matter of seeing the “whole image”. The reverse of this is that more elevation may look right unballasted but look too much with the ballast done.
You say that the scene looks right from some positions and wrong from others… would you help all of us by taking pics from marked positions (maybe every 9" or 12" round the curve). Just as it is would be good… better still would be the same pics (that’s what the marks are for) with different arrangements that you try.
this would give all of us a really useful reference that I’m sure people would really appreciate. [8D]
I can say that if the loco topples over you’ve elevated too far. [:-,]
It does look a bit exaggerated, maybe using .020 would be a good compromise. The most important thing is operation. The gradual rise in the elevated track is critical though the easement into the turn.
If it works with all your equipment and your happy with the appearance go for it.
Going a step further, you say that you don’t want it to look wrong with the ballast and scenery in…
It would probably be well worth using some cardboard or foam to quickly rough out the scenery… especially on the outside of the curve… but you want to watch the inside as well…
On the outside you might find that a cut side will change the appearance drastically just by changing it’s angle. I would guess that a vertical wall outside would make the elevation look less than a shallow slope but I don’t know. Similarly a vertical wall on the inside will make the trains appear to be leaning or falling into it. In all cases where you put the base of the scenery relative to the track (how close and relative height) will probably do as much to affect the scene as the angle a cut or structures have to the horizontal.
Something else that will come into play is any bridges or other structures that go over the line and “frame” the image of trains approaching/departing. The more square the frame is and the more at right angles to the track the greater its impact will (almost certainly) be. BUT, doing things with the shapes and angles will also allow you to change the image…
Again pics to show us what you find would be great.
I realise that this may be a lot of messing about with try-outs but it’s better to figure things out now than be fed up with it in a few months or a year or so.
If you have one spot that really looks bad but the rest is good and/or okay you might see what happens to the image if you plant a tree or structure at a critical point. Finding the critical point will be eperimental.
It looks about like superelevated ought to look to me, but I thought most mainlines that do not still carry fast passenger traffic did away with superelevation back when fast passenger service died. I know the N&W in Virginia did at the places I looked (no Amtrak service), but I really haven’t looked much elsewhere. The issue was/is that on the prototypes (and you may find the same thing, as alluded to above) long heavy freights want to stringline to the inside of the curve, and superelevation doesn’t help this situation at all. Most freights do not go fast enough to need the elevation to counter centrifugal force, and freight and money are the name of the game. I do not know what Amtrak pays to “use” rails, so maybe that is a controlling factor. I am going to have to look at the curves down the road I guess.
Well, if you guys see that CSX mainline curve (on S.R 574 in eastern Hillsborough County) you might say it’s overdone as well.
I was amazed when I saw it for the first time at how trains whipping by at 50-60 mph stay on the rails. Appearance-wise, they look like they’d tip over if they went through any slower.
The train in the above photo leaning at that angle, imho, closeley resembles what I’ve seen on the prototype.
It seems comparable to some high speed mainline super elevation I have seen. Unless you typically view your layout through a camera lens at track level, a little extra should give a better appearance for normal viewing. But for a high speed mainline appearance, I think you’ve got it.
The superelevation is a function of the curve radius and the speed around the curve. Obviously ours is going to be much more than the prototype becasue our curves are sharper. I defy anyone to even notice the lean with anything less. There was one place where the Reading had a superelevation that was steep and it was at the Olney Avenue station in Philadelphia. I would ride the Budd cars from Fox Chase to Reading Terminal and Olney was on a right hand curve. You could hardly remain in your seat when the train stopped there if you were on the left or uphill side. I’d bet that was more than a four inch rise from rail to rail.
Well I don’t know what the mathematical formula is, but it’s basically a balancing act. When a train goes around a curve, it puts added pressure on the outside rail. When the track is tilted, it puts added pressure on the inside rail. A real railroad would try to calculate (based on the average speed and weight of their trains thru that curve) how much superelevation they would need so that the amount of pressure put on the outside rail in the curve is equal to the added pressure on the inside track caused by the tilt.[%-)]
However, I do agree with earlier comments that a slight exageration might look better on a model RR, since we are usually not viewing our trains from a more elevated position than we usually see real trains run by us.
Guys…what do you use to superelevate your roadbed…i mean, shims i guess, but what material? Is there some method or material that’s best? How about spacing of the shims? Never did the superelevation before, but going to try on my re-design.
