Hi all,I'm a beginner building his first layout and putting a number of months into the planning partly because I'm planning a rather complex first layout and partly to mitigate the risk of making mistakes. I'm building nearly an exact replica of the Dave Frary Pennsylvania RR featured in Model Railroader years ago. I'm looking to make one change which I know is not prototypical but I'm more interested in more continious trains. The change is on an incline (3%) where I want to add a turnout (which I intend to keep flat as possible a few inches before and after) which will have divergent route that wil be on a decline (2%). I've attached a picture of the plan with the proposed change in red. Does anyone see any issues with this and if so, can you please elaborate? Thank you.
I would suggest keeping the turnout completely flat and only making level changes well after the turnout. I had a long Atlas #6 turnout which had a lot of derailment issues. The problem seemed to be that when my long BLI Hudson locomotive approached the turnout, its long wheelbase caused it to bridge stiffly over the turnout and not follow th track on its way down, thus missing the track on the other side of the points.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
It really depends on what you want to run, I have done it before but most of my stuff is small.
Zeke
My medium sized layout employs two turnouts on a grade. In my case I ensured the grade was consistant through the turnout and diverging route for at least 12-18" in all directions. I operate diesels (GP7/9, RS1) and medium steam locos (2-8-2, 0-9-0) and have no issues.
Dwayne A
da29. the artist formerly known as da1.
On a grade is fine, as suggested, but the vertical easement out of that plane must start about the wheelbase of a steamer away from any changes in elevation...for the diverging route beyond the frog. If you somehow bend a turnout so that it has a hump, effectively, you'll get tracking errors and derailments. So, turnout flat, approaches as tangential as possible, and don't start a change in elevation after the frog until about a steamer's frame length.
Risky design with that turnout. I think stuff will come uncoupled since all xyz axis are in motion. Turnouts introduce some turbulence so even the slightest Install imperfections will cause derailment.