I have a couple of questions on how to model street running.
How do you make the street go over a turn out?
How do you manualy switch the track?
How do add a car stop with out jutting out of the road?
I know on the prototype RRs they switch the tracks using a steel crowbar that they insert into the switch stand or whatever is set in the pavement. John Pryke’s book Modeling a city scene (I think its called something like that) has more info.
Tyler
Springfield Central Railroad
Route of Pittsfield Pass
http//
That crowbar is also handy for protecting against the “wildlife” that lives under those flat switch stands.
John Pryke’s book is called Building City Scenery for Your Model Railroad, and I highly recommend it. For his street trackage, John used PECO turnouts, with the built in spring. The spring keeps the points in place without needed a machine or ground throw. He used styrene for the street surface and cut slots in the styrene over the throw bars. To throw the turnouts, John inserted a bamboo skewer in the slot, and pushed the points over.
Nick
Thanks for the info. I’m going to have to go to my LHS and get that book.
Turnouts imbedded in pavement often have only one moveable point. Back when Da Bronx still had streetcars, the motorman had a long steel bar with a hook at the end which he used to throw the point if his car wasn’t following the same route as the preceeding one.
As for car stops, the tracks that just ended in the middle of the street (streetcar lines) didn’t have any. Industrial sidings in paved streets (curb edge, usually) might have something that looked like a one tie long speed bump at the end of the rails. (It might well have been a tie entombed in asphalt.) Tracks which ended off the street (in a mid-street island or on the sidewalk side of the curb line) might have steel bumpers similar to the ones sold by Walthers, or some other form of bumper, or nothing.
Except for track used by streetcars in revenue service or passenger trains, street trackage is always operated at restricted speed, is frequently undermaintained and lacks most of the more expensive accessories found on private rights-of-way.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
We still have street trackage around here.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j319/pcarrell/Prototype%20Train%20Photos/aah.jpg
They still run passenger trains on it too! (Thats the old NKP No.426 leading the train!)
BTW, those cars are driving.
No turnouts in the street though, so I can’t show you that.
To contol a turnout in the street on the layout, I’d suggest either a under table switch mackine, or maybe the old choke cable trick.
Try looking at how trolley modelers do it at: http://www.trolleyvilleusa.com/