Trouble in the curves

[Anonymous]

Hello,
Hi everyone. I'm new to model railroading, so please, excuse my ignorance.
I have a problem and need help. I put up an HO scale or guage track around my room, 11' x 11', under my cieling, 12" in. wide, and I am having trouble with the train when it gets to the corners or curves. It will either come off the track or the cars will un-couple. I ued flex track, 100 guage (?) track all the way around the shelving. Are my curver too tight? What can I do to correct this problem? I thought about extending the shelving from 12" out to 18" or 20". Please help. I appreciate all comments. Thank you so much.

[ereimer]

my guess is the curves are too tight . what kind of equipment are you running ? modern diesels and passenger cars (and a lot of freight cars) will be way too long for such tight curves . wider shelves will allow a larger radius curve , i think 18" is the minimum with modernt equipment , loder loco's and cars might work down to 15"

[mike33469]

My around the room layout is 11'x12' and its 24" wide you might want to increase the width. BTW its code 100 track.

[selector]

Could be the curves are too tight, but there are other possibilities. Your rolling stock or loco wheels might not be in the right position on the axles...called being out of gauge. For example, if they are spread too far apart, they may work in the straights, but when they get to a curve, the flanges want to ride up on the inside edge of the running surface of the rails, and the cars derail. Or, your couplers may be mismatched, either for height or for design/type. Or, your couplers can't swing far enough from side-to-side in the curves, thus levering themselves up and out of the tracks in an attempt to disengage.

Addendum- Even your rails could be out of gauge. The best way to check all these issues is to get down to eye level and watch your tain move through the place(s) where they derail. (Does it derail in only one spot, or maybe a couple? If it is random, or on all curves, then the answer is likely mismatched couplers in the former case, and out-of-gauge wheel sets in the latter, assuming the rails are in gauge everywhere.)

[Jetrock]

How tight are the curves--what radius curves did you create with the flextrack? And what sort of equipment are you using--small 40' boxcars and shorty engines, or big steam and long passenger cars?

Did you include easements on your curves--gradual "lead-ins" of broader radius to help the transition from straight line to curve? These can ease the jostling of engines when entering a curve.

[bogp40]

If you find that the problem is too tight a radius, you don't need to use a wider shelf, just add triangular shaped pieces of matching thickness ply in the corners. I would use 24" as a min. as not to restrict the rolling stock that you can run.
Bob K.

[MisterBeasley]

To measure the radius of your curves, go out an buy a section if 18-inch radius Atlas snap track. Lay it on top of your track, and slide it along. If your track has a tighter curve than the sample, you should think about relaxing it a bit. Alternately, you could spend a few bucks on a nice piece of metal that's exactly the size of the space between the rails of an 18-inch curve. I use that when I lay flex-track, so I know I'm OK.

[Anonymous]

For your future reference (you seemed a little confused in your first post), here's a few track terms:

Code--How high the rails are on a piece of track (Also, code 80 track typically has black ties and code 100 track has brown ties, but that has nothing to do with the word "code").

Gauge--How far apart the rails are on a piece of track.

HO Scale--A scale that is 1:87.1 and whose name means Half O, or half the size of O scale.

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone,
Thank you all for your great info. I already added the triangle pieces to the corners to try and add more space and I tried to go into the curves gradually. I am running F7 Diesels with "NFL" boxcars, sorry, I don't know the length of them, but they are pretty short, about 6" to 7" long. I also have the F59 (?) California AMTRAK diesels. I put alot of work into the setup, so I know I need to fix it right so I can run the trains. I almost gave up on the idea, but I am back with it ot get it up and running again.

Thank you all again for your expertise. Have a great day!

[BurlingtonJohn]

One other thing you could do in addition to all of the above is to check the actual joints ... if one rail is on top of a rail joiner, that will give you trouble. The general rule of thumb is to go with as large a radius curve as space will allow. Have fun!

Regards,
Burlington John

[jdtractorboy]

Derailed and befuddled[:D],

did you happen to have joints between the sections of flextrack on a curve? Unless the outsides of the rails are soldered together, when the pieces are flexed, the track will tend to buckle and not be a smooth transition from one piece to the next.

If this is the case, take the sections on the curve, lay them straight, solder the outside of the rails at the joints together, and then flex them back into the curve. This will allow the rails to act as a single, continuous section.

Chuck "Diesel"[8D]

[Anonymous]

Another thing to check is the car weights. The NFL cars may not weigh enough to hold the curves. There is a table on the NMRA web site that gives the recommended weights per car length. Go to www.nmra.com and look for their standards section.

[Jetrock]

freeman54: Again, what radius are the curves? If the curves are too tight, that's your problem. We now know what you're running on them--but what radius are the curves?