Used these and like em.
While it’s MRR conventional wisdom to stay away from S-curves, I think you have applied it in such a way that it will be a stunning scene coming into that bridge. [tup] You will have to post pictures when the scenery is done.
Yes I know! But I wanted the good looks out of it. Also, the large radius seems to keep the problems at a minimal once I worked out the kinks with the track. Walthers heavyweights never have any problems here and neither do large engines like Big boys.
Magnus
3% works just fine. I’m not into Steam, don’t know much about them in comparison, but I have diesels and one engine can pull plenty up the 3%. You have to throttle up a bit, but I like that…seems realistic to me. I certainly do not have any problem whatsoever with 6-7 cars. Even the 4% isn’t awful in terms of getting up the hill, though you may go full throttle. I had 4% for a bit, operationally they were OK but I removed them because they just looked too steep.
On the grades, sometimes you got to do what you got to do. If you have room for a 2% grade run…the 16 feet or whatever, by all means go for it. The gentler the grade the better. I just had to make 4"+ so that my s
I think some refer to these as “vertical” curves and I have the same problem. It is worse with an engine or car that has the wheels farther from the car ends. I have an Atlas RS that is particularly affected by this.
The suggestion to sand the top of the transition is a good one. Also, the idea of using flex track centered over the “transition” should help a lot too. Where the train starts up the incline, I think I’d be tempted to put something about as thick as a matchstick there and let the roadbed & track kind of gently curve over it.
Hope this helps as well…
dlm
I have a long 2.1% grade with 25" radius curves. Lighter IHC 4-4-0 and 2-6-0 had some wheelspin with over six cars. Adding weight helps. 12 wheel drive diesel pulls 15 cars no problem.
Also I used WS incline starters feeding into a sloped piece of extruded foam. Much cheaper, any needed width, smoother. You don’t need the specialty product on the slope itself.
Karl
Another WS incline question…once in place and glued, has anyone tried trimming them to narrow them down? I am going to be using them on a section of N scale double track…one is not wide enough for what I need, and two side by side is WAY too wide.
One is not wide enough? I used one for a double track in N-scale and it was pleanty wide enough.
Just use their hot wire foam cutter and you whould be fine. One thing to be careful of though… remember that the farther to the outside of the curve you go, the longer that stretch of track will be to get to the same place (think that a semicircle of 22" radius track is longer than a semicircle of 18" track). As such, if you have two side by side, as you go around the curve, the effective height of each one won’t be the same. The one on the inside of the curve will be higher than the one on the outside.
Yep, I liked geometry in high school! : )
dlm
I don’t recommend it but if, because of space limitations, you MUST use 4% don’t get 4%, get 2 2% inclines, put one on top of the other, with the top one starting about a foot up the bottom one. That will ease the transition, lessening that kink that others have described.
My experience with small steam on my 2% grades is that 5-6 cars is their maximum. That’s OK - gives me the excuse to double-head.
Greetings,
The other night I was playing around with some 2% inclines trying to figure out some alternitives for the kink (or vertical curve) that is formed at the top and bottom of the inclines.
For the bottom of the incline I tried laying a 1/2" raiser over the base raiser and incline. This smoothed the transition at the bottom but when the raiser was moved to the top did NOTHING to help smooth it out. Next I tried using a 2" raiser. Funny enough the bottom kink seemed to be more pronounced!! [#oops] The top of the incline was a bit more rounded but the change from angled to flat could still be seen.
So, this did not help solve the problem, at least for the 2% grade. I did not have any of the other incline grades. I also did not have any 4" raiser to work with on the 2% grade. For now filling the bottom and sanding the top still seem to be the best option. I wanted to share this so that others could try it or variations on this idea.
Christopher
The section of track in question starts out with wide spacing dictated by a near by crossover using Unitrack #6 turnouts. That’s around 1-3/4" spacing, plus a 1/2" on either side for the Unitrack roadbed…about 1/4" wider than the incline starters.
Ah, I see now. I used Atlas code 80 flex on cork roadbed with no crossovers. It allowed me to stay within the width of a single set of inclines.