I want to add a street car system to my 1950s HO layout - I currently have a Walthers street system installed and would like to add street car tracks to this but I’m not sure how to do it. Any suggestions?
Maybe I should add a little more information. I have the Walthers street system in a rectangle approx 7’ by 3’ running around a 1950s town and would like to leave it as much intact as I can since I have street lights, traffic signals etc already installed. Ideally I’d like to run some track down the center of the street and around the town. To make it as realistic as possible I think the rails should somehow be imbedded in the street but I really don’t know how to do this… Bowser has a PCC car which is exactly like the run I used to ride to high school in the late 50s in Kansas City and I fell in love with it.
Here are (3) websites for you:
[1] Modeling Electric Railroads – Kalmbach’s Information Station Book is currently a free PDF-download, This gives you what you need to incorporate traction into your layout. Download, print, and re-read!
[2] Trolleyville Schoolhouse – Over 2 dozen construction articles including streets.
[3] East Penn Traction – A most comprehensive traction club for resources.
In HO Scale, Orr Street Rail System, is highly recommended. Also remember, not all of your traction-trackage has to be in a street. There were also systems with elevated traction, RDCs alongside mainline rails, and interurbans combining inter-community travel – see Wikipedia Interurban.
You will have to disturb your already-installed streets to a certain extent - the extent of the width of the ties under the rails in your street. If you can keep a large percentage OUT of the street, that will minimize the streetbashing.
Rails out of the street includes running the streetcar track down a center island in the street - and everry cross street becomes a level crossing, probably with warning lights if not tied to the traffic lights. Another possibility (beloved of motorists and shopowners[(-D]) is to run the rails on ordinary ties where one parking lane would ordinarily be.
Rails in the street are laid with so-called girder rail, which has a rolled-in flangeway. I have seen that simulated with a strip of styrene. The 1:1 scale flangeway lip is about 10<15mm above the railhead. Frequently the ordinary pavement is broken by a tie-strip wide expanse of Belgian Block (easy for the track maintainers to lift when maintenance is required) or concrete pavers about 2 feet square.
Test your streetcar for minimum radius, and build to a radius about one inch bigger. This is the one place in model railroading where streetcorner curves and hideous overhangs are true to prototype.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with electric cars that don’t run in the street)
Another option is the Electric Avenue system from the Proto 87 store. If the street is finished this would not add much height and can be attached to the top of you road. They say it works with regular HO scale wheelsets and have a video on their website.
http://www.proto87.com/easy-street--track-system.html
I have the double loop like in the video but have not built it yet.
Chris
Thanks for the help-some good suggestions here. The Electric Ave system looks pretty slick and I think I’ll do some homework to see if I can make it work on my layout. Do you know of anyone who has used this system with the Bowser PCC cars?
If I were you, I would just buy a section or two and test it.
It does look really slick, so I have book-marked it myself.