Changing Rail Sizes

[zgardner18]

Hey guys, I want to know who has different sizes of rails for their layout, and how have you transitioned from one size to the other? Is there a special track that does the transition or what? I want to use a smaller rail on sidings and spurs than my main lines but I have no clue what to do.

-Zak

[cacole]

Walthers sells transition rail sections to go from, say, code 100 to code 83, or code 70, etc. I believe Atlas makes these, too. And there are also so-called "transition rail joiners" for accomplishing the same task, but they don't work as well.

A trick that has been used and recommended by Andy Sperandeo of MR magazine is to flatten the end of a code 100 rail joiner (after putting it onto the code 100 rail) with pliers and then soldering the code 83 or 70 rail on top of that to bring it up to the correct level.

I've successfully used that technique to use a code 83 turnout with code 100 rail when only the code 83 was available.

[zgardner18]

Hey thanks for the info, I guess all I should have done was open the walther's catalog and there would have been my answer. next question, what is people doing to make superelivated curves?

[cacole]

Other than for appearance only, there's no need to superelevate model railroad track. In fact, if you overdo it, trains might derail more frequently on your curves than if it were not elevated.

For HO scale, you should not go any thicker than two pieces of 3x5 card or manila folder material along the outer edge of the curve. Personally, I don't think the time required to do this is worth the end result as far as appearance is concerned.

[BR60103]

Peco make transition joiners for their code 100 to code 75 track. The code 75 still needs to be raised a tad. The joiners are a pain to use -- I go for the flattened joiner myself.

[orsonroy]

Transition joiners? We don't need no stinkin' transition joiners!

Seriously. My last layout (dismantled due to a move last summer) had four rail sizes: All switches were Peco code 75, as was the mainline and all passing sidings. When I ran out of code 75 flextrack, I started using Micro Engineering code 70. All spur sidings were Micro Engineering code 55. Since I had a box of it left over from two layouts ago, my staging yards were Atlas code 83. And since M-E crossings were scarce, all my crossings (lots of them; I'm modeling Illinois) were all Atlas code 83.

I just laid the track. No rail joiners, no shims. The trains ran perfectly, even when running between code 75 and code 55. I had ZERO track-related derailments, since I had wide curves (32" minimum), all #6 or #8 switches, and made sure that the track wasn't kinked anywhere (I'm not very good at track laying, I just take my time to get things right). Eventually, I did file down most of the rail joints to smooth them out, but considering how well everything ran, it wasn't a priority.

Oh, and this wasn't a small layout: 12x25 triple deck, with a 3.25 scale mile long mainline, one very large yard, and seven town sites. One crossing featured eleven diamonds and two switches! The entire main line, part of the yard, and five of the towns were fully operable.

So don't worry too much about transitions. So long as your trackwork is smooth, your engines run well, and your cars all have the proper weight and metal wheelsets, rail size discrepancies shouldn't be an issue. File 'em down if it bothers you.