Super-elevated curves are just cool

I am working on a small layout, basically a long-oval with 12.5" radius curves and a bunch of sidings. It fits in about a 3x7 ft section of our living room.

Anyway, Pete Nolan made some comments about super-elevating his curves by simply gluing strips of .010" and .020" styrene under the outside rail. right to the bottom of the tie strips. Well, since this is my test layout, I decided, what the heck, I'll do it. So I stripped up some styrene in about 3/32" wide strips, then cut the strips into sections about 1" long. Each end of my oval is 180 degrees made from Atlas code 55 sectional track so I just started gluing these little 3/32"x1" bits under the outside rail. I used the .010" under the first section at each end of the curve and .020" under the rest of the arc.

I then just glued the track down like all the rest and weighted it to make sure the inner rail was touching and glued down.

All I can say is. Wow!. It seems like a very small amount of super-elevation, but trains run incredibly smoothly around the curve and look awesome leaning into it. In fact, I am amazed at what this one feature does to my otherwise rather boring oval.

If I can get some pictures, I'll try to post both the layout plan and the curves up close.

Thanks, Pete for a great idea, and I whole-heartedly recommend this method to anyone else laying track.

Here is an attempt to show, don't know if you can tell.


Bob Tolbert.

[ 07. December 2004, 03:01: Message edited by: NukeMaster ]

 

Bob:

Super elevation of the curves solves many problems with loco and their performance.

There are some who don't believe that the super elevation of curved sections does anything to improve a loco's performance. Unfortunately they are wrong.

There was a discussion of this today on the Atlas forum.

I'm glad you tried this little trick and happy that it has worked so well for you.


Stay cool and run steam....

The JJJ&E has all it curved radii superelevated when I started construction over 4 years ago.

 

Hmm, I trust you "blindly" Bob but for gryns I'm going to test this on my layout. I "should" be able to have my web cam setup so folks can watch the differance.
Anyone interestd in watching this if I can pull it off?
I have a 30 yo 2- 8-8-2 . Of course it might not care (or even run for that matter).

 

Super-elevated curves are cool!

Super-elevated curves with easements are beter!

Try starting into your curves with a 28" or 30"
radius curve on each end of your curve.

Loco1999