89' cars and 11" rad curves...

Probably a little worse. How about fluffernutters with green olives for lunch? Yumm!

89' cars don't do well on 18" radius on my railroad.

 

I have around a 21" minimum radius on my layout and get by OK. I couldn't imagine running them much tighter as some trailers already have issues spanning platforms on a couple of my long runner flats.

Russ

 

About the same for me, 21"-22" min radius for the 89'ers to look and operate well IMO.

I picked this radius specifically for them. Any smaller radius, they just didn't look good to my eyes.

I haven't had any performance/operating problems with this radius, using either pizza cutters or low pro's.

 

I have 11 1/2" radius and run a couple 89' cars but my curves are hidden by tunnels. Yes I know they wouldnt look protypical but no one can see them. I did however figure out that if the coupler is body mounted with that tight of a radius it will pull the cars on either end of it off the track or vise a versa.

 

A good mininum radius seems to be 2.5 times the length of your longest car.

 

Incidentally, prototypical minimum radius for 89' flats, when coupled, is 350 feet, or about 26 1/4 inches in N scale.

 

Be careful of super elevated track on turns with cars that long and short radii.

 

15 inch minimum .. anything smaller is BIG trouble .. BTDT!! Too many times!:thumbs_down: :angry: :sad:

 

My friend Jim was switching out a bulkhead flat, and they decided to use an 89' flatcar as an idler car to shove a car into an industry. Real tight curve, since the siding had been moved over when the line was double tracked. The siding was fenced in for the entire curve length until you go through the gate. Wouldn't you know it, that 89' flatcar popped off the rails, and couldn't be pulled out. They had to bring in a crane and remove the fence to get it all straightened out. Luckily he was Conductor that day, and didn't get too much grief (the engineer is responsible for train movements, the conductor is responsible for what moves and ground switches). Nope, 89' flatcars don't do well in tight corners!

Now, there was the day they pushed the string of cars blind. Seems they were pushing the string up the ramp to the old above- ground turntable. The conductor was tired, and didn't ride the shove. First they knew something was wrong was when the air blew. Sure enough, they had pushed the first car of the string up and across the turntable, then off the other side! No way to get the car back up on the turntable, as the wheels fell off when the car went over the edge. They had to get the crane again to get the car off the turntable. Do you know how hard it is to get spare parts for a 1913 steam engine driven turntable? Everyone got to go to a safety class! mg:

 

OMG, there are other deviants out there!!! My son-in-law perverted my pure-as-the-driven-snow daughter into that foul pit!!! She now partakes of that unnatural combination.

Bob in IDaho, who keeps his perversions under wraps, well, mostly, considering all the spyware out there.

 

I'm running a 14-car train of 89' intermodal flats (My Super C) through 11" curves and up 2.5% grades. Curves, stringlining, extreme coupler forces. Three Kato units on the front.

All cars have either MT swinging coupler holders, imitation ones, or truck-mounted couplers. The heavy cars are in the front and the light Trix flats are at the rear. Mix of MT, Con-Cor, Trix, and Alan's cars.

I can run the whole works through 11" curves (hidden) with no problems. On visible track the minimum is 13".

I also have autoracks and piggybacks in my regular freights, same way.

I'm using all pizzacutters. Sorry, this is one of the reasons why - the curves, train forces, side pull, etc., are all relatively extreme. I'm doing it, it can be done, but there's the compromises involved.

 

One more thing I'll mention on experience - the most critical part of that whole deal on truck-mounted couplers on long cars is that the coupler height must be dead-on to center, and that all couplers MUST MUST MUST either be Reverse Draft Angle (RDA) or trimmed up so that they are. Learning that technique has made long trains of MT couplers possible on my layout.

There is so much room for vertical 'pop' on those long cars, that if the couplers don't self-center vertically and stay that way under stress, you'll have constant pull-aparts, or drag trip pins and derail, or both. Compared to that issue, everything else is pretty trivial. I could probably make low-pro's work, or even some body-mounts, but man alive, those inside knuckle faces on every car better be dead-on centered and perfect, so that on a good hard slack runout, everbody centers on their own.

 

I assume you're talking about the Kato CZ... it's engineered to run on just about any Kato track except the 9.5" radius curves... It's not going to LOOK good, but you CAN run it on 11" R curves...

My rule-of-thumb for good-looking passenger car operation (with Unitrack) is this:

• Visible areas: 19" R with 28" R used as easements into the curve
• Some not-visible areas where no other recourse exists: 15" R

You can get away with murder by using easements (higher radius track leading into a lower radius curve). This makes the transition less abrupt and reduces the 'toy-train' look. For example, my standard 180 degree curves, using Unitrack, start with one R781 (28" radius), continue with R481 (19" radius), and end with another R781 (28" radius). Where space is tight, I start with R481 (19" radius), followed by R381 (15" radius), and ending with R481 (19" radius). In hidden areas, I add a piece or two of R348 (13.5" radius) in the middle to further tighten the curve.

Regards

Bryan Pfaffenberger
Charlottesville, VA

 

Can be done in some cases, but it's pretty ugly. You really have to watch the side clearance also.

I've had the same experience as Pete with respect to them with 19 inch radius curves.

I didn't build my tunnels to clear them either, so it's kind of a moot point with me anyway.