nearing an idea

[nickt22]

I have struggled to plan my 4' by 16' layout, but I am closer to having a plan. What do you guys think a minumum height is to have a 2nd level cross over a 1st level on a layout. I was thinking about 5.5 inches for a bridge over the bottom level of track. I thought about having a 2nd level that is 4" above the bottom and rises at a grade to the bridge, or just two seperate 4 percent grades that lead up to a diagonal cross over the first level.

[spankybird]

I have 6" between my levels.

 

 

[willpick]

5.5 in. should be enough to clear most  cars. There are a few that are taller-- scale sized  double stack containers come to mind-- as well as TOFC's, trilevel autoracks, and excess height boxcars. Prototypical clearance is 22.5-23 ft. from railhead to obstruction(tunnels/bridges). 22.5 ft. = 5.625", 23 ft. = 5.75" clearance.

Hope this helps

[Anonymous]

The Lionel Trestles where 6 inches high and the FasTrack Trestles are 5.5 inches high.

What I find interesting is the tunnel portals are 7 inches high with a 6 inch opening... doesn't make sense to me to have the trestles be 1 to 1.5 inches shorter than the top of the tunnel portal...

Brent

[kpolak]

The Lionel Trestles where 6 inches high and the FasTrack Trestles are 5.5 inches high.

Brent

The new trestles are 4-3/4"...just looked them up.  I have 5" for an underground passenger station...

Photos: Sunday-Sunday-SUNDAY!!!

Kurt

[dwiemer]

As others have posted, for most things, over 5" should be good.  However, if you have any larger cars, or plan to have any, you will have to go higher.  Also, if you are planning to run electrics like a GG1 and want to use catanery, you have to add for that.  It is much easier to build it as high as you can expect your biggest car/engine will be.  One of our guys had to build up his tunnel portals to allow a GG1 to run with catanery.

Dennis

[chuck]

When measuring your clearances remember that you need to start measuring at the top of the railhead of the lower track and stop measuring at the bottom of whatever you want to clear.  Multi level layouts do add visual interest but the amount of trackage/space required to move a train from one level to another can be prohibitive.  A true 5" clearance with a reasonable 2.5% grade will require almost 17 feet run in and 17 feet run out.  You may want to just have isolated loops with vertical clearances.

[msacco]

I pretty much use the standard Lionel trestle set which by the way has the "A" trestle at 4 &3/4" not 6 as previously mentioned.

     I have an over and under and my clearance from top of rails on bottom level to railroad ties on top level is approx 4 &3/8". This does limit some of my car heights on this loop but this keeps my grade to roughly 4%.

   Here's a link to my google video of the trestle height and over and unders train operation.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7560649863011664165&q=lionel+trains+in+action&hl=en

 mike S.