hey there all ,been reading a while now and thinking of bulding in ho.(have a g scale out side but in a funk over it ,knees going bad) any how playing with track plans and have some questions ...1.my math not great so how many feet of ho track equill a scale mile ? 2. trying to stay at 24 rad. min cause I know ill want a 50s style passenger train but what switch # is 24 radius (the turnout part) ? 3. are the walther empire builder pass, cars rellible on 24 rad... 4. on hieght, from rail tops to top of say well cars with 2 high containers or car hallers, modern, what is the min clear...? all I can think of right now . many thanks Jerry
I know what you mean about bad knees and G-scale trains -- that's why most of my G-scale track is elevated!
HO scale is 1:87 so take the distance of one mile and divide it by 87 to get a scale mile in feet. Let's see, now. A statute mile is 5,280 feet so that figure divided by 87 would give you 60.68 scale feet = one mile if my calculator is right.
I have no experience with the Walthers Empire Builder passenger car set and your experience certainly may differ, but two fellow club members bought Walthers Heavyweight passenger car sets a few years ago in Union Pacific and Rio Grande liveries and had horrible results with them derailing all over the place on our HO scale club layout with minimum 26 inch radius curves and on their respective home layouts.
Only the Walthers cars had this problem. People with IHC, Rivarossi, Athearn, Con-Cor, and other brands of passenger cars have no problems; only Walthers. The problem seemed to be related to the 3-axle trucks on the Walthers cars.
They both finally dumped the Walthers cars on e-Bay and swore to never purchase any of them again.
You say you have no experience with the Walthers cars, yet you make a blanket statement like that based on other's experience. Did they try to track down what was causing the derailments? How well was the track laid? Were they coupled too close? Were the wheels in gauge? Many others have baught Walthers cars and not had any trouble maybe the OP should post another thread and ask specifically about the cars, (many people are going to ignore this thread because of the title -way too general).
Jay
C-415 Build: https://imageshack.com/a/tShC/1
Other builds: https://imageshack.com/my/albums
Yes to all of the above. I was there and tried to help them diagnose the problem. Wheels were in gauge. Trackwork is so perfect that nothing ever derails unless someone fails to throw a switch in the right direction, even with triple headed engines pulling 50 or more cars and pushers on the end.
Prolonged correspondence with Walthers never resolved the problem. Walters even sent replacement trucks to one of them and the same thing happened. We added weight, loosened the truck screws, put longer shank couplers on, removed center axles, and tried everything we could think of.
ok guys ,lets forget about that issue . well a 24' rad be okay for 50s style passenger cars of most makers ? and thanks for help got the millege down . still need the rad of switches #6 #8 ect. to equil 24 rad & min clear. for those higher modern well cars ect. thanks again
1. 5280 feet per mile. HO is 1:87 scale so 5280/87 = 60.68.... real feet per HO scale mile.
2. 24 inch minimum radius wants at least a #6 turnout. John Armstrong's book "Trackplanning for Realistic Operation" has tables and graphs covering all that sort of stuff plus lots of good reading about railroading. Great book.
3. I've run 80 foot passenger cars around 18" radius, so I would expect the Walther's cars to manage on 24 inch radius. And, there are modifications you can make to improve tracking on curves, things like weighting the car up to NMRA standards, removing or Dremeling away bits of undercarriage that interfere with the truck swing, improving the swing of the couplers.
4. I think I saw double stack cars need 20 scale feet of clearance from the railhead, that would be 2 3/4 real inches.
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com
Walthers heavyweights are designed for R24 curves. A #5 turnout has a R24 equivalent HOWEVER you can't do S-curves very well with that.
I have 12 walthers heavyweights with ZERO issues on R24. I don't know what the other club's problems are.
Don - Specializing in layout DC->DCC conversions
Modeling C&O transition era and steel industries There's Nothing Like Big Steam!
thanks to all ,very helpfull in plannig,thanks again Jerry