Will I have a problem running fairly modern passengers cars on my N Scale 11" track radius?
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LION does not model in N scale. Him has enough troubles seeing HO scale.
What is normal N radius?
Normal cars should make normal radius, but detailed prototypical cars might not.
LION bought some NICE HO scale while in Japan, him never was able to make them run even on 24" radius curves. They probably needed 36" radius curves. LION has never owned such a curve.
Modern cars are 85’ long, If the couplers are truck mounted they may take curves better than if they were body mounted, BUT truck mounted couplers do not like to back up, so is a passenger car yard in your plan? how will you back the cars into the yard? Body mounted couplers will work better there, but again require wider curves.
Curves can be nasty things even on realroads. LIRR has no problem with 85’ cars, NYCT had to place restrictions on 75’ cars and has gone back to 60’ cars on B division. (They run 50’ cars on A div.)
The trick is to look at where the trucks are mounted in relationship to the end of the car. Closer to the end of the car is normal, and decreases the overhand at the ends of the car. Especially nice going across switches. BUT THE BELLY overhang will be greater, and the middle of the car could strike the wayside.
NYCT moved the trucks inboard a foot or two, which stopped the belly strikes at the expense of greater end overhangs. On the 75’ cars they had to lock the end doors lest people get killed when the trains went across switches.
The railroad has to specify how they want the cars built to accommodate their infrastructure, and sometimes the have to manicure the wayside to fit their equipment. Your railroad is no different. If you are married to 11" curves, you can only but try the cars that you want to run to see if they will work.
Another issue is if some cars have truck mounted couplers while the locomotive or other car that they are connected to has a body mounted coupler. It may be necessary to have a baggage car (or s
Assuming the design hasn’t changed too much since I used to run N-scale the answer is, “No”.
They look goofy but the truck mounted couplers allow them to go around slick as can be. I even ran my full 85’ cars on 9 3/4" radius.
If on the other hand they have body mounted couplers, go for 15" minimum.
What sort of car’s are you running OP, all of my cars made it around 11" but not without putting up a fight(by causing a lot of drag). I’d recommend 19" as a minimum, it looks real nice actually I do believe I have videos of trains running on the two different radii.
Having some N scale stuff onthe small under-the-tree-table top layout, We switched to code 55’s 13.75"R curves to better accomodate the GG1 and it’s long associated passenger cars.
I would not do less than this. They do well at that as a minmum.
http://www.wholesaletrains.com/Detail.asp?ID=200420433
We probably should have gone 16.25" as a minimum:
http://www.wholesaletrains.com/Detail.asp?ID=200420438
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