I made my first curve last night. I used layers of the very thin styrene. It seems to work good, no derailments or anything, but it sure is tedious attaching all those little strips of styrene a layer at a time.
A word of gentle caution, Joe, if I may. Once you place a loco on that curve, I suggest you look carefully and ensure that the tilt of the loco isn’t overdone. The tilt should be readily apparent, but not more than about 2-3 degrees. In other words, the effect you want is a subtle one, not a “Gosh, see how much that loco leans!” look.
Superelevation can be overdone.
I superelevated it 4 scale inches. Just about prototypical. I dont think you would notice it if you didnt know it was there, but i can see it and i think it looks pretty cool.
A word of caution, eh? Superelevation of curves is done to counteract the radial tipping forces encountered at high speeds going around them. The forces are not thesame on say a drag freight, in fact if excessive it could cause stringlining. So a little thought about what you are planning to run and how fast, is in order before building it in.
Im going to be running Amtrak and some small-medium size freights. No real drag freights though. By the way, what is stringlining?
If you put in too much tilt for superelevation, is it called Megaelevation? heh heh j/k
Stringlining is where the pull on the cars makes them want to create a straight line through the center of the turn, rather than follow the track around. Generally leads to tipped cars and extensive derailments. I’m sure somebody else can give a better explanation than that.
Darrin
I don’t think I could improve on that - pretty well sums it up.! That is why on long mixed freights, I always try to position the heavier cars in front and the light cars toward the rear.
OK thanks for the explanation on that. Actually Ive seen a pretty impressive “stringlining” wreck without even knowing it. It was on an N scal modular layout at a show. They were running a huge piggyback train. Probably 100 cars at least. They went around a sharp turn and starting in the middle all cars in the train tipped toward the center of the curve. Probably wouldnt have been so bad if it wasnt all those 5 unit cars. Anyway it was pretty funny watching the engineer pick up all those N scale trailers, took him the better part of an hour[(-D]
Oh, you mean like “real world”? The joys of being a railroader!