I had a search around on this subject and my plan would work but i worry about the appearance.
I have to try and incorporate a 3% grade in my new plan to obtain a 4 inch elervation over the given distance for clearance of my stack train under a girder bridge. This grade is on a 26" curve. I have had to modify all the grades on the layout plan for this train. However, what will a 3% grade look like on a scenic section? I dont want it to look like something out of an amussement park!
I wonder if it will be more trouble than its worth from what ive read, should i stick to normal height cars and use lesser grades?
3% is pretty tough, outside the realm of specialized areas like logging, docks, etc.
To me, it’s not just the appearance factor (and I do think you’re getting pretty close to “toylike” with what you describe.) Equally-to-more important is the operation factor. I find nothing so frustrating in this hobby as having to use the five-fingered-engine to coax trains up an over-sharp grade, or to end up running little ‘shorty’ trains just to accommodate it.
And it’s not even just the grade itself, but the transition. The steeper the grade, the more critical it is to ‘ease’ the transition vertically (just as with a curve horizontally), that’s even more true as the rolling stock gets longer. Especially on a curve, lack of vertical easement can give you lots of derailing and decoupling issues. And if you do ease it, now you’re defeating the purpose. You can take X feet to properly ease into a 3% incline and get to the level you need… but very little more than X feet might well also serve to get you to enough height if you just use a 2% incline which requires much less easing!
However, there may be a solution: people often fail to realize you can cut your gradient in half if you incline the lower track down at the same time you take the top track up and over. Obviously I don’t know your layout, but I’d definitely look at working the incline to more like 1.5% up on one track and 1.5% down on the crossed-over track, rather than 3% one way.
Failing that, yeah, my experience would say you’ll end up more frustrated with it than it’s worth. Either find a way to design the grade out, or give up on the rolling stock in question.
If you have a moutain style layout, and you want impression rather than prototype numbers 3% and 18 inch curves will work. I need two articulates to pull my coal train over the mountains and 20 MPH is top speed, but that is what they did in Virginia and Colorado. The over gang on my 18" curves bothers the rpototype people, but I think the look is what the articulates were all about.
The point is, What do you like? My whole layout gives the impression that everything is working pretty hard and that is what I wanted.
If you want 20 car passanger trains zooming by at 100MPH, you need to be very flat with very wide curves.
My switch back has some 6% and the three truck Sand the Climax work hard on that to get a few logging cars up it.
I had a 3.6% grade on my last layout, and it was decidely a bit much, both in terms of looks and utility. See picture below, and you can be the judge (camera angle may not yield a true rendering, but you will get the idea).
So, on the current layout, only a couple of days before champagne [:D], I dropped them to 3%, and I am happy to report that it looks considerably better. My little P2K 0-6-0 can actually pull nearly twice as much as it could up the 3.6% grade. For example, formerly it could shove, tender first, two of the small red ore cars with a light fake load of coal that I made. It would slip with three of them.
Now, it will tow two BLI H2a N&W style coal hoppers with load, and I actually got it to move three of them with some slipping and the Great Conductor beneficently offering a finger nail in one spot. Once I have the track tuned nicely, it will pull all three reliably. Big improvement.
Can my motive power handle my typical train over it? (If not, how difficult will it be to add helpers/additional powered units?)
To address the first issue - the ruling grade on the transcontinental railroad was set by Congress, which specified that the grade could not exceed the 2.2% of the Baltimore and Ohio. There have been steeper grades on Class I railroads, notably Saluda (on the Southern) and Pennsy’s Madison Incline, both of which were close to 5%. As long as the scenery is appropriate, 3% isn’t unreasonable for a model railroad.
Transition into a grade is like transition into a curve, and doesn’t really take that much space. For long cars on 3%, 300mm on either side of the theoretical point of grade should be adequate, and will add only 600mm to the level-to-level grade length. (I personally use 75mm/1%, but I’m running shorter equipment - 250mm frame length.)
As for motive power - that depends on what’s on your roster. Some models can’t pull themselves, while others can open a pull-tab can if you can couple them to the tab. I have a couple of diesel-hydraulics that can pull every car in sight up 3% unassisted, and severeal teakettle steamers that have to be doubleheaded to handle five seventeen ton WARA-1 class four wheel box cars on the same grade. One of the great disappointments of history was the alleged meager performance of a certain manufacturer’s Norfolk and Western Y6b - the prototype was notable for immense tractive effort and could allegedly move a mountain if the coupler knuckles didn’t fail.
Chuck (who is building a mountain railroad with 2.5% and greater grades)
The elervation figures are highlighted. The small yard on the right is at zero elervation. To give an idea of size, the layout is 9.5 feet by 11.5 feet with access points at each corner. Its all based around 28" maximum around the walls for reach issues. All the dashed lines are hidden trackage. This plan is a modified and stretched John Armstrong example. Im after more of a scenic rugged country (California) rather than towns and switching layouts, i would like both in an ideal world but there simply isnt the room. There will be a couple of small spurs. The x-overs on each side can form loops on the hidden trackage to store complete trains.
The problem ive come up against is i have to obtain a 4.5 inch rise from the yard at right to the bridge at left, although this is about 12.5 feet of track in which to do it. The line that passes under is already at 1 inch so as to be at the required 4 inch to clear the tracks on the far right. This grade is worse as ive only got about 9 feet to obtain the 4 inch ellervation (from 1 inch) at the bridge lower left, so call it 3%.
I reckon if i dont run stack trains i’l save myself a whole load of hassle.
Please feel free to post any short comings in my plan!
BTW Selector, that grade looks prety good actualy, you can certainly see it but it dosnt look out of place by any stretch!
Yeah, it all worked okay, but only the bigger engines could handle a decent load up that stretch.
I like your plan…it is very much like the one I am scenicking at the moment. However, mine is folded at the top centre, and that is the only overpass. I hope to post some pix in the next week or so…sorry, no digital camera. The point is, with only the one overpass, and my yard where yours is, I have a climbing inside main leaving soutward, going up the left side, and then passing over the descending outer loop that had passed nearly 8.5" above the same yard, but now on its way down, if you follow me. Therefore, with the outer at 8.5" above my yard, and descending commencing at the lower right corner, with the inner rising out of the yard and climbing to the overpass at top dead centre, I have 20 feet to achieve all the clearance in the world! Works like a darn, too.
One last item…and it was a given for me, noth a druther. You and I have no way to turn trains. They will require the Sky Hook Mark1 to turn every item to reliev boredom, and to even flange wear. So, I will cross the open pit with a diagonal lift-out bridge that will serve as a turning-S (a reverse loop, necessarily). I don’t know how you feel about that, but the bridge doesn’t have to be there when you don’t want it, and you can turn your trains in about one minute, otherwise. Just a thought.
Thanks for the comments Selector. I kinda feel like im getting somewhere with this one. I would have liked an ‘escape’ for the ariving loco in the yard and as you rightly mention, a reversing loop would have been great and a real luxury but i just cant get it into my space (isnt that always the way!)
The idea of the liftout bridge is certainly a good one, you’d only need it there when you wanted to turn and all other times it would be out of the way.
Anyway,
I think that these minor short comings will be made up with some very nice scenic possibilities and its certainly a world apart from my first effort in the same space. Ive fiddled with this plan for hours, fine tunning, starring at it and trying to improve, if i add anymore, i get into reach issues etc. I added the yard lead as origonaly the yard came off the main bang in the centre of the right side. Atleast now i have a lead i can poke some cars around the small yard.
I may have either 2 or 3 spurs, and some more research is needed to find some small industrys suitable to occupy these.
One possibility ive thought about on the grade issue is to try it at the bench work stage and see what it operates and looks like. With the flexibility of the L-girder system, it wouldnt be all the world to drop it all down an inch if it was a non starter.
Thanks for all the help guys, its much appreciated.
Gary, I would most definitely rig up a 6’ incline with powered track and try your typical consist at grades until you know you’ll be in trouble. But, don’t forget that unless you can lay your graded track as precisely as that test grade (i.e., with a very even gradient…no vertical kinks!), you can expect performance differences on your layout grades. So, test to the max, which will give you an absolute, and then back off a full %-age or 1.5% for safety. Now you can figure out how much run you will need to get the rise.
Yeah, i think im gona do that now. I didnt realy want to go to the trouble but it’l be alot less trouble in the long run if i carry out some tests first. Il get some peices of flexi and borrow some 1x3 from the benchwork! Think im going to be shocked at how much hauling capacity i lose though.
Here’s what I can tell you: On flat track, my BLI K-4 will easily pull at least 20 full 80’ length pullman cars. I say at least because that’s all I’ve got to try.
On my old layout with a 3% grade, it would pull 3. 4 if I drove very carefully and didn’t mind a bit of wheel-slip. 5 was a no go no matter what.
So basically, if we take best case and say 4 on a grade, and that 20 is really the no-grade max, that’s 80% LESS capacity due to the grade. And that was a straightaway grade, not a curve. Curve on grade makes the effective % incline notably higher (there’s a calculation somewhere, but it’s something like 1.5x)
Curious to hear what you find in your own explorations…
Please test carefully. When I was constructing my climbing loops; I tested with my two poorest pulling engines and one car more than what would be my maximum train length. I made sure that I could stop and start anywhere on the grade with that combination. I have a lot of 18" radius curves and small engines. I found that a 18" curve was almost equal to twice the grade as a straight piece of track. I ended up making the long straight runs at over 2 % and the curves at under 2 % to make things work correctly. I climb 24 " with 100’ of total track (mostly hidden). This picture was taken during construction and testing.
That looks impressive Alan, how long is the run from the tunnel former in the backround to the nearest track in the foreground? Also, what is that roadbed you’v used?
I just had a look at your thread, brilliant work. So much progress in just a few months!
That is about a 17’ run. Each loop is right at 33’ total length and the camera point is right at half way around (using the portal location as the start point. The roadbed is cork on 3/4" plywood.
