Camber problems revisited

[Anonymous]

Not necessarily so Bob; no matter how you bend them the inner track will always be longer and need to be squared off. Do they actually indicate which side is the inner and outer and how do they differentiate between different raddii and also mate what about an "S" bend.

Our local people are all interested in that twin track bender they are all talikg about getting the club to buy one but i don't know if anyone has used one and to what end. or what results were obtained.


rgds ian

[Capt Bob Johnson]

Each track would need to be bent to a different radius. The inner track to N-22.5 mm amd the outer to n+22.5mm; thus giving a centerline radius of n on a 45mm guage.

I'd say that it does take that into account as the inner track needs cutting after bending!

[tangerine-jack]

So you mean I did all that thinking for nothing? My brain isn't used to being worked so hard[:P]

[Anonymous]

Captain Bob and Jack;

Mates yopu have both missed the point, i reckon i have solved the problem, it was largely the rail bender and as i only borrowed it, i will not do so again.

You know that bender that bends two at the same time, are they axactly the same?

If so i reckon this could be a mistake as if you look at a manufactured curve of any kind the two tracks aren't the same! And this will cause distortion in the finished assembly.

Rgds ian

[Capt Bob Johnson]

Anybody who reads this forum knows you aren't quite level there Ian!

Since you are into bending your own, there is a German outfit { Train-li}(Not your beloved LGB) that makes a bender that bends both rails at the same time! 2 others from our club went partners with me in buying one, and it works great! I think I can recall seeing an ad for it in GR mag! From watching it work and playing with it, I think it would resolve your problem! e-mail me if you need to know where you can order one!

If you were to get one, they also make a clamp that holds track ends even on one end while bending so that you would only have to cut one end of one rail when finished. It looks like we're going to order one of them too! Seems to save a bunch of work , especially when working with ss track!

[tangerine-jack]

The problem could be the bender. If it introduces a vertical stress into the metal while you are bending it horizontally, then logically you could have a camber problem. The track ties (sleepers) will be trying to hold the track in the curve as well as holding it level.

It would seem that the area of track in question should be removed and checked on a flat surface for vertical stress distortions. I know nobody wants to tear up the railroad, but it seems that to solve the problem once and for all that this would be required. A few hours spent getting the track exactly right will pay off big in the future.

[Anonymous]

Those eof you who have been contributing to this forum for a while, will remember the discussions regarding this subject.

For those who do not recall; I bend my own track out of club rail 3.7 m or 11'11" long and in so doing i was getting a negative camber on bends eg the outer track was lower than the inner track. We looked at many things and only trwo things seemed to work 1/ not making both rails the same and allowing for a smaller internal curve. 2/ over a period of time packing the outer curve up, whilst trying to hold the inner curve down. These both worked to an extent but not as well as i would like. I was initially using our clubs rail bender.

We recently had to reroute the 10 m track connecting area 2 to area 1 and as it was such a small job we didn't bother borrowing the clubs bender. We had two left hand R3 bends and about an R3 "S" about 2 m long. One of the left hand bends had a slight camber problem which we were able to overcome with ballasting. The rest were perfect; we used a locally made bender which we had borrowed for this small job. It works on a slightly different principle to the clubs one. After all the trouble we had, the one thing we didn't consider originally was the bender itself. I am now pretty well convinced that the problem was largely caused by the bender

Any thoughts on this salient matter that has actually got something to do with building a garden madel railway?


Rgds ian.