i am new to hobby and i am having trouble with drawing a radius fo curves. i have a shelf layout which is 8x12 and 18 inches wide. do i have to measure from the middle of the room? i’m i limited to size of radius due to narrow shelf.
any help would be great .
thanks kevin
One easy way that may work is to measure from your plans where the end of the straight sections of track are and then use something long and flexible like flextrack or a long thin piece of wood that will bend at a constant radius and line it up to the straight sections and trace the natural arc that results.
So for instance (in case what I just said isn’t clear), if you are copying from your plan to your layout it is very easy to show where straight sections are supposed to go as they are easy to measure where they are relative to the walls or edge of the benchwork. So, I would mark the extent of the straight portions of track that you have onto your benchwork… then you will have a bunch of straight lines not connected to each other. Then take a straight piece of thin wood, plastic or even flextrack and center them on one straight line then bend to match up with the next straight line. This should create a nice arc to trace out a natural radius.
The other option is like you alluded to, which is to set up a tripod of some sorts in the middle of the room and use a long stick or string measured out to your desired radius and make it that way. Probably a lot more work.
I hope this helps.
Dustin, I couldn’t have answered this better myself. I will add, however, that a yardstick is the excellent tool for scribing this curve and it will give you a perfect easement.
I read somewhere that, if left to its own mechanical properties, flex track will automatically fall into an easement. I have never tried it but I think I might just give it a “by guess and by golly” attempt on my next/future layout.
An easy way to draw curves is to get a wooden yard stick and drill 1/8 In hole at the 1 in mark, the 1/2 in mark, the 3/4" mark and at 19" and every in thereafter. Then you drive a nail at the center pint and put the 1" hole on it then swing whatever radius you want. The yardstick becomes a “trammel”.
BUT since you don’t have a tripod to mount the trammel, put it on the floor and mark radii on pieces of poster board or masonite. Then cut them out and use them as templates to draw your radii. You can vary the radii by increments of 1/4 in, based on your track centers (e.g. 24 in, 26.25 in).
For other planning buy a right and left hand switch of your favorite size and brand and the photocopy them. Use the photocopies as “sectional” track to lay out your trackplan full size on the benchwork. makes it real easy to see what you can put in a location and you KNOW it will fit.
Dave H.
Depending on the room you have, you could solder two pieces of flextrack together, rails staggered by a couple of inches or more, and do that while they are lined up very straight and both level. Then, lay the widest curve you can get around your corner using those two soldered pieces, and still keep your overall trackplan footprint and clearances.
Here is what I would do: anchor the two ends with track nails from the very end tie and on until about 5-6" in towards the centre. Place the ends where you want them to join the tangents on either side of the curve. You will have to let the rail bend in a natural arc towards the middle to accomplish this. Now, using a yardstick or a moderately stretched string and nail, measure the radius at the centre. Then, sweep that fixed length of string or yardstick with the mark at the centre of the track at arc-centre, and see what happens as you go to each extreme of the curve. I’ll bet you find that your mark begins to creep toward the inner rail, and if so it is because the rail arc is forming a natural easement. This is a good thing.