train elevator - am I dreamin?

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
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You know all those movies you saw where a group of people are in a desperate situation and one person submits a hare-brained scheme and another person snaps his fingers and says “it’s just crazy enough to work!”? I’m wondering if this is one of those moments. Also whether this post should go in the Prototype forum, because one never knows.

My small layout will require a 3 - 4% grade to get my branch track up and over the mainline. I’ve said before I’m okay with that, but another modeler and I were talking about the possibility of a cassette that might hold the entirety of any train I’m likely to want to bring up the branch – at most a mixed local of two freight cars, a caboose, a passenger coach, a baggage combine, and the locomotive, so maybe 4 feet total.

I hadn’t considered this before, and then I started thinking whether it would be <possible | a dumb idea> to invent/introduce the world’s first total train elevator to lift a train in toto or in halves straight up to a second level. Not an incline cable lift against a hillside, more like a vertical lift bridge but with a different level at each end. And not as a hidden device but out in the open, as if it were prototype, a feature of the modelled world. It would look like this:

It would accept maybe half a train, locomotive in front, lift it and allow it to exit at a higher level, then drop again to accept the rest of the train pushed onto the elevator by a dedicated switcher, and then raise that second half. It could be modeled to look like a gargantuan steel bridge.

What say you all to this idea? I’m not really saying I would do this – I don’t believe I have the skill to engineer such a contraption. But I’ve seen some of your photos of vertical lift bridges for tracks crossing in front of doorways. If my longest train is four feet, the elevator would on

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there are comerical products even.

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i’ve seen others that are much longer

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Years ago there was a Youtube video where the guy had a sixteen-foot long one that lowered the trains up and down to and from staging. It has been done and I don’t think they are that complicated to build. Considering some of the grades I have seen used to access staging, it is a good option.

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Matt.

Here in the U.K. we can buy The Nelevator. They make it in N Gauge and 00-HO gauge

https://www.nelevation.com/nelevator/

David

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https://www.trains.com/mrr/news-reviews/news/video-watch-the-train-elevator-in-action/

Articles

2001 Model Railroad Planning page 78

2009 Model Railroader pg 60

https://www.aglasshalffull.org/article-logging-train.html

There used to be several commercial train elevators offered, but I just searched and only found the Nelevator linked by NorthBrit

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Woof.

That it can be done has just been established by several posters. But can it be done so that it looks prototypical?

Well. Woof. Yer problem is that, in the real world, that would be one expensive propsition. So you’d likely NEVER see one on a branch of a small railroad.

However. Of course it COULD have been done in the real world. Witness lift bridges, as you note. What you need is a SINGLE SPAN bridge long enough to hold your train. That, unfortunately, is pretty long. And consequently VERY expensive in the real world.

For a small railroad like yours, it would likely only lift one piece of rolling stock at a time. A passenger car maxes out at about 85’, so you could do it with a bridge 90’ long. And two locomotives, of course. One on the high track, and one on the low.

I entered a search for “vertical lift bridge 90’” and got this:

http://bridgehunter.com/la/st-tammany/625200060705291/

It’s a road bridge, but I think you could work up something similar for a lightweight branch line setup.

Here’s a bridge that’s on my short list of all-time favorites (along with the Queensboro and others):

https://www.railpictures.net/photo/678101/

Anyway, just do a search for variations on “vertical lift bridge”, and you shoul

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I could accept an elevator for storing trains on shelves, as Greg has posted, but in an on-layout scene (even though it might do what you want) it’s going to look odd.

My choice would be for the steep grade instead, as it will give you a good excuse to use multiple locomotives. The former Saluda grade, on the Southern, was 4.7%, and there were others, in various countries, which were steeper.

Another option, with lesser grades, might be a switchback, with stub-end tracks zig-zagging up the side of a hill.

I used a fairly stiff grade (just under 3%) to get my trains to a partial upper level on my around-the-room layout. The grade, which includes multiple curves, is about 45’ in length.

Wayne

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There are more things…than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hay_Inclined_Plane

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An alternative might be a combination of a marine railway and a ferry: multiple parallel tracks with wooden deck mounted on an inclined frame a bit like that of a Mt. Washington cog Vauclain. This would be cable hauled up a proportionally steep grade to a level ‘slip’ at the top; the cars and locomotive would never ‘see’ a steep grade or the need to be cable-hauled or ‘barneyed’ as at Ashley with the risk of rapid and lethal runaway…

Run it just like putting the train on a ferry, with the cuts balanced transversely. Note that it can be raised laterally with a little more alignment complication.

This involves less structure and alignment than a straight vertical lift would involve.

I would note that there were multiple-deck lift bridges, and it would not be ‘that much of a stretch’ to have multiple levels of line available for a short train or cut of cars to be selectively lifted to some elevated track on the ‘far end’…

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An HO version of the Mount Adams Incline in Cincinnati:

Mt. Adams Incline by Dan Gaken, on Flickr

You could expand this idea.

Good Luck, Ed

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As others have stated, it has been done before, many times, and with success.

The term I remember for such a device was “vertical transfer table”.

-Kevin

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an alternative, John Arnstrong’s Dehydrated Canal

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The trouble is, it would not be prototypical. But, as a hidden device it would work. Build it as a hidden passing siding to get to the next level. Use scenery to hide it.

Rich

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If I remember the MR article correctly, the author called it a “train eater” because his held four or five trains stacked on top of each other. So it was both staging and a life between levels.

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I’ve seen one used, versus a Helix, to raise the whole train to a second level. Used up alot less space.

Dan

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Hi Matt.

It’s not just possible. It can certainly be done because I have a train elevator.

Mine is a semi-circle but the principle is the same. Here are some pictures.

A set of ball-bearing drawer guides are attached to a 3/4" piece of plywood and those are attached to risers that support the elevator which is also 3/4" plywood. Here is the picture of the drawer guides.

The whole thing is counter-weighted so the elevator can be moved by hand.

It was a compromise between having to give up the space for a helix, (which I didn’t have) and the scenic issues with the structure.

If you have more questions, please let me know.

Scott Sonntag

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Knew there had to be a version of it somewhere… and that you’d probably be someone that would have pictures…

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Hello All,

When I first read this post what came to mind was the Falkirk Wheel in Scottland.

Something similar could be modeled for rail use with PVC piping for the lifting structure rather than a flat structure, that as has been discussed here, or the bathtub structure that holds the water in The Falkirk Wheel.

A 3-inch diameter section of PVC could work, 4-inch diameter would definitely fit an HO locomotive and track.

The track would be attached to the inside of the pipe. Cutouts, the length of the pipe could provide exhaust ventilation and allow for inspection.

Weights between the curvature of the pipe and track would be needed to keep the unit level during operation.

Unlike The Falkirk Wheel, one (1) of these “tunnels” would be attached to the lifting arms of the structure.

The other side would be counterweighted- -either a ballast-filled piece of PVC pipe equal to the length of the structure*,* or square counterweights like a bascule or lift bridge equal to the weight of the structure and the train.

External bearings between the lifting tunnel and arms would be necessary.

The operation I envision is not full circle like The Falkirk Wheel, but rather a lift in one direction only- -counter-clockwise- -for example.

In this way, the lifting tunnel would raise from the lower track, move up, in a semi-circle, and drop down to the upper track section.

Gravity would hold the track in place for electrical connection.

A cog or chain drive would power the movements, realizing that the unloaded downward) direction would put the most stress on the system.

Hope this helps.

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Lots of good ideas here about inclines and hidden apparati, which tells me that my idea of an out-in-the-open behemoth trainlifting bridge structure probably is an idea so unwieldy that no one here wishes to consider it for longer than it takes to submit a better idea [:)] Thanks all. I was just curious. I think I’m leaning (so to speak) toward the grade. It will be less than 4%.

Although, Scott…

This is a slab of earth being moved as if by the Hand of God and not a “manmade structure” as I’d proposed, but oddly enough in considering my options I actually considered exactly this solution. My grade would go up around a wide curve and I could use this very contraption to lift the whole curve instead. I could even put it inside my tunnel, since this is not a built structure but a sort of geographic one; i.e., the “lift” event is not one that the inhabitants of the modelled world would be experiencing (unless this is a slip fault at the edge of a tectonic plate). Thanks for posting photos.

Weirdly, the day I posted this, I came within about two hundred yards – without knowing it until I’d gotten home – of a lifter that is still in existence on the hill above the town of Diablo below the Diablo Dam here in Washington. It’s an incline, and only could take one railroad car at a time (much like this), so not what I’m after at all. But it’s interesting that a number of you turned up variations of that idea. Thanks for the responses.

-Matt