I’ve hunted a little bit on how to do super elevation in n-scale and havent found alot of good tips… can anyone point me to someplace that has some tips or share them here?
TIA
Shim the outside-underside of the track with sheet styrene.
David B
Yah!! I think that would be a good deal, just a 1/8"wide strip of .060 styrene under the outside rail. Ballast will eventually cover it.
Nik & he how thinks he’s boss,
I use uni & fine scale Peco flex and use different wire gauges to US and I find wire about 1.5mm to 2mm thick run round a 15" or more curve under the outside rail of lightly pinned track it dos’nt look bad(some may say its terrible but it your layout who give a)and if you strip 3or4" of insulation off each end the easment looks ok too.
Try it, experiment a bit and if you are not ballasting straight away, a couple of VERY light dabs of water based PVA will hold it(just soak it to pull out).
Keep at it youngan
pick
Yup, I use the wire method. Haven’t priced styrene for that application but I suspect wire is cheaper.
Use very sticky tape.
I figured an easy way to do it.
The only difference being my layout is in HO scale.
Since my other hobby is scratch building and flying RC airplanes, I used 1/16 inch thick by 1/8 inch wide balsa strips around the underside of the outer part of the ties, then used white glue from a hypodermic type glue gun to glue it onto the WS foam roadbed,using pins to hold it in place until it dried, then layed down my track. Worked just fine.
The track is shimmed up 1/16 of an inch or approximately .060 inches.
Used gray latex caulk to fasten down my track, and taking a tip from Joe Fugate , I used cans of vegetables layed on the track to weight it down until the caulk dried.
Then I hooked up power to the track, and slowly ran my BLI J1 PRR steamer around the curve( 34 inch radius), to check for any problems, and it went just fine!!!
Unit “leaned just enough” into the radiused turn.
Repeated the procedure on the other ed of my layout, which is 24 feet long, by 6 feet wide, a complete walk around setup.
Next comes the inside main track with carefully placed switches from the outside main to the inside main line.
I wil run my yard off off the inside main, with a reversal loop at one end of the train table. Actually my table is built in 3 sections, each 6 by 8 feet. My base is 2 inch pink foam, with WS foam roadbed, I also have a big supply of cork roadbed also.
Next comes the center background divider down most of the tables.
Still have a lot of work ahead of me, but having fun doing it!
The foam is supported by 1x3’s on 16 inch centers, with an outside framework of 1x4’s.
Each table has 2x4 legs(with adjustable height screw pads on the bottom of each leg), the entire assembly is wood screwed and bolted together, so if I ever decide to move it, it breaks down into 3- 6 by 8 foot tables, the legs unbolt, and up the stairway it will go!
Actually tried moving on
I second this idea.
I use plain old masking tape – cheap and simple. Ballasting will cover it all up.
I start with one layer under the outer rail along the tangent (straight) and gradually add layers until I reach the mid-point of the curve. Then do the reverse until I’m back down to zero along the other tangent. I try to make each “step” the same length – about the same as my longest (passenger) cars. Don’t forget to start the super-elevation a short distance (a car-length or so) before the beginning of the curve to create a vertical easement.
The beauty of this method is that the longer the curve, the more layers you use, thereby enhancing the super-elevation. The shorter the curve, the less (or no) super-elevation. I’d keep the maximum number of layers to 6 or 7. I use 4 or 5 on a 18" radius 90° curve (in N-scale).
For HO-scale, you’d just have to add more layers of tape (about double).