What if you had two? [:-^]
We don’t.
Working on the layout yesterday I did find that we had the closest track on centres at 1 3/4" not 1 1/2" anyway. Two track underlay butted edge to edge gets you 1 3/4" on center track spacing.
Of course we do have tighter track spacing elsewhere as we have turnouts…
Well, yeah Mike.
You already said that you had to scrap the most excellent 1 1/2" spaced yard when “we” moved.
Ed
Ed
Ed I have four different wide vision caboose’s so that 1.5" or even the 1 3/4" is not good for me
Besides I use #6 atlas swiiches and they are 2" on center for ladder tracks
Sometimes I wonder does someone even have anything to photograph maybe that’s why no posting of pictures
Mike 1 1/2 will probably tell you to pull your cabooses off in your arrival/departure tracks, and you won’t have any trouble in the yard itself.
Rail nippers and files can shrink that distance right down. Should you care to.
It’s a LOT of work, unless you’re set up to do it regularly. In my opinion. Still, I’m inching (millimetering?) towards it. I’ve got a nice Flikr account somewhere that I paid real money for. Someday…
Or. I could just play with my trains, instead. And yack with my n’er-do-well pals online.
Ed
At no point did I say I built a yard with 1 1/2" spacing.
I said 1 1/2" spacing worked. And it does.
2" is plenty.
I don’t know if this was mentioned above or not. However, I was looking at the literature for the MicroEngineering Ladder Track System and they say that their system results in a “minimum track spacing of 2-1/16 inch (the NMRA standard) between body tracks”.
Well, they’ve got the word ENGINEERING right in their name, so they have to pretend that the 1/16th inch matters. [:D]
Well, I’m not trying to make this thread any more crazy than it already is, but I did mention the NMRA Recommended Practice for tangent track a while back, and it is not 2-1/16".
First, the NMRA no longer has track centers as a “Standard” but rather as a “Recommended Practice”. A trip to their web site will help explain that difference.
RP 7.1 says that the recommended track centers for tangent track can/should be based on prototype dimensions based on era.
MODELING ERA PERIOD CENTERS
Old-Time/Narrow Gauge Before 1920 12 feet
Classic 1920 to 1969 13 feet
Early Modern 1969 to 1983 14 feet
Modern After 1983 14 feet
If we just go with the 14 foot number, that translates to 1.931", or, a bit under 1-15/16".
2" track centers are 14’-6"
2-1/16" track centers are just under 15’
The ME yard ladder is an interesting product, but not one I’m interested in. It uses #5 turnouts, it stacks them in very tight and adds a curve after the frog. This is common on ther prototype, but they are using lar
An innocent comment based on an observation and more froth gets spewed.
gg. you guys need to get a life.
One thing to consider is different spacing for the receiving and departure yards from the classification tracks. Modern practice would use 20 ft spacing for the R/D tracks to provide a safe environment for car inspectors.
if you want more information than you’ll ever need on yard design, check out the FRA Yard Design Manual.
https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/32572/dot_32572_DS1.pdf?
Ray
It is interesting how “facts” are so bothersome to some people…
Just another reason I spend way less time here.
Sheldon
Be sure to read and comprehend Chapter 2 first.
Finally. Somebody actually said it.
The information in the ME documents confirms this. The description is tortuous though.
Of interest may be the information might be inaccurate, hard to be sure yet.
I’ve laid out a ME yard ladder in feather format and the track spacing seems to be on 1 5/8" centres, as measured. It’s not nailed down yet though.
I used two RH 5b to start and end the ladder and LH 5 c,d and e for the intermediate sidings. I have 6 tracks occupying 9 1/2" total width center to center so clearly not 2" track spacing. The first siding after the RH 5 is 2 1/16" away from the departure track (which in this yard is also a siding) measured on center but the remaining sidings are all closer together than that.
I shall be interested to see how it all works out once I align it accurately and secure it. The ME yard ladder turnouts are inherently flimsy and very hard to lay down straight. I am frankly less than impressed with ME manufacture.
One puzzle is how the yard ladder system can yield more siding length in the same space while using the 2"+ track centres. That seems impossible geometrically.
Facts? Facts? What “facts”? I said nothing that required a “fact” check. I only passed along someone else’s statement. Sorry that you find that bothersome.
I have not seen the system so I am speaking from what I read about it. I think the goal is to make the ladder track more upright rather than stretched out to save length, which one of the main problems with yards and model railroads. I think they stack them together to keep the geometry of the closure and diverging tracks as gentle as possible while still saving length.
And just a guess: The result is a ladder that has as much linear length as a ladder built with a traditional #4 frogged ladder, but able to use a #5.
I’ll let you figure out if that’s the case and how effective that is.
By rotating the spine of the stack of switches more to the vertical (compared to the incoming yard lead), the tracks at the “top” of the yard can be a bit longer. There has to be a slight curve to bring the diverging tracks back to parallel with the yard lead.
The spacing of the switches in the stack has to lessen, too (along the length of the stack); so that you can maintain your track spacing (which otherwise spreads out a bit).
This clever trick ends when you have shoved the stack of switches together enough so that the points of one are just after the frog of another.
ME does it with special switches. It would work with regular ones, too. Maybe not as well/smoothly, though.
Here’s an example using Atlas Customline #6’s:
For the straight part of the switch, there are 4 ties beyond the points, and 12 ties beyond the frog. Let’s remove all but two at each location. The switch is now 71% as long as a stock switch.
Recall that it’s been said that the stock switch gives you 2" yard track spacing. If that’s the case, a ladder built of the modified switches would give you a spacing of 1.42".
Assuming you want to stick with the 2" spacing, you could regain that by putting a bit of curved track in, after the frog, on the diverging track. Yes, I can prove it.
This brings the yard tracks “down” at an angle. If you rotate the spine of switches (and the associated yard tracks) into a more “vertical” position, the yard tracks can again be parallel to the yard lead.
And in doing this, you get progressively longer yard tracks as you go “up”.
Ed
As others have said, this is a well-established idea. Adding a slight curve to the diverging leg of the first turnout increases the angle a bit, increasing (slightly) the length of the body tracks. One can do this with any turnouts, the ME system just includes the curves as part of the pre-fab turnouts. In the example below, the added curves are in red.
ME doesn’t add a curved track it curves the diverging route. That part I get. It’s how you also shorten the whole ladder without also narrowing the track centres closer together.
Angling the first turnout more obtusely to the main line and then curving back the diverging routes to restore parallel sidings makes sense to me. We did a wild ass version of this to get maximum siding lengths and the curves out of the diverging routes connecting to the straight tracks were ahem, interesting. Peco #5 were used. We got longer sidings with goofy curved entries (we also double ended most of them which got really interesting). Incidentally, that’s also how we discovered that track centres down to 1 1/5" to 1 3/4" works (and doesn’t really) because we got our curvature geometry a bit wrong and ended up with three sidings very close together. Our exit angle off the main line was the driving factor as we couldn’t move that and also get the longest possible sidings. We had lateral space but limited length available.