Hello,
Anyone have experience building and operating a curved turnout yard ladder?
I’m thinking of using a few #*'s, and #7 1/2’s and constructing a compound ladder with them. It looks like I’ll gain about 2 feet in the body tracks.
Here’s a picture:
The Top compound ladder is all #6’s. The curved ladder is #8’s down to #7’s. Radius’s go high to low from 36", 32", 28.5", 28, 24"…
You will definitely gain some space and they look cool. Be cautious about the tighter radius Walther curved turnouts. They behave like they are tighter in the inner curve than what is claimed. 24 is seems more like 21, 20 is more like 16. I think someone measured them and found the radius numbers to be inaccurate. - Nevin
"Be cautious about the tighter radius Walther curved turnouts. "
That’s good to know, I based my drawing on the Walther’s turnouts!
I agree with Nevin. I used W/S curved #7.5’s that were supposed to have something like 26" radii on their inner route, and I found that it was closer to 22". I had to perform some cutting on the ties and the webbing between them on both routes in order to get them to fit into my trackplan. Once I had pinned the points end of the turnouts to hold them in place, the surgery I had done allowed me to bend both routes outward enough that I got an additional 2-3" of radius out of them. That sufficed.
You might want to make a deal with your supplier to get the # turnout you think you need, plus several of left and right in the next size up, and to then return what you can’t use without maiming them.
My SD unit’s do not like the inside curve of the peco curved turnouts. If possable have a straight section behind each turnout if your wish to use kadee uncoupling magnets. However it does save a lot of room and longer yards…John
Second that with the Spectrum 2-8-0. It will take the diverging route from the points, but coming at the switch from the frog end, it doesn’t like that smaller radius. All wheels in gauge.
Shim the gaurd rail, that is what it is there for. Peco switches tend to be very forgiving (and a european prototype save the code 83 line) and have wider gaps at the gaurd rails to allow for oversized flanges and out of gauge wheelsets. Shimming is done quickly with styrene and will fix this issue.
David B
Think about coupling also, not just uncoupling. With a curved yard, you may have a lot of trouble getting cars to couple. With large-radius curves and short cars, this is less of a problem.
I have not had good luck with curved turnouts. My only suggestion is ,that if you insist, Make them as broad as possible. Specially if there’s long wheelbase locos and /or passenger ccars involved.
Tim Warris, from Fast Tracks, observed that the commercial suppliers of curved turnouts merely curve a straight turnout, and that is not in keeping with the proper frog configuration for a true curved turnout. (At least, I think it was he.) That said, I only get shorting issues near the frog with blind drivers on my longer steamers. I don’t get any derailments, no matter which way I enter a curved W/S 7.5 or 8. I don’t have any curved Pecos, so I can’t comment on them.
We had a yard on our HO scale club layout that used Peco curved turnouts for all of the yard ladder due to the space it was in. That yard has been torn out because it was practically impossible to back a train through the ladder into the yard without derailments.
There was an earlier thread specifically about Walthers/Shinohara turnouts to which I posted this:
"To recheck my curved turnout sizes (Walthers/Shinohara Code 83), I built a homemade beam compass, laid-out arcs and overlaid the turnouts. The results are:
• #6/#6.5: 24/18 (frog# depends on whether you believe the box label or the imprint on the turnout!)
• #7: 28/22
• #7.5: 32/26
• #8: 36/30
I also checked a #4 Code 70: with a 22" radius for the closure rail, it must actually be a #4.5.
The inside radii are not what Walthers posts nor are they as imprinted on the underside of the turnouts!"
Dante
Dante, does this mean that the inside curve of a #7 turnout can replace an actual full 22" curve?
I’ve got 3 Peco curved turnouts on my layout. Two are inside tunnels, so I’m very happy that they have never given me any trouble at all. The third is out in the open. The turnout itself is fine, but I had to be very careful with the track alignment and how the rails mated up with the Atlas flex track. I think I used sectional snap-track for the turnouts in the tunnels, and that gave me far fewer problems. With flex-track on a curve, there is always sideways pressure trying to throw your rails out of alignment, so you might consider using short sections of snap-track adjacent to the Peco rails. Peco Code 100 doesn’t quite match up to Atlas Code 100 in either rail height or cross-section (different rail joiners provided) so some fudging is always necessary.
It appears to be so to me.
Dante
Thanks for the info folks! I’m a long way off from deciding what track to use but the W/S info was eye opening. I’m going to look into other brands to see who implements frogs properly on curved turnouts.
I’m not sure that the W/S turnout frogs can be characterized as improper - inaccurate, perhaps, when compared to their published radii, but well-made.
Dante
Coupling/ uncoupling would happen only on tangents, I plan to use the curves just to “compress” the ladder and wrap it around a corner…
Thanks for the extra clarification…Selector’s comment about the frogs is what I’dlike to find more about.
What length trains and how well was the track laid?