I was wondering what the if a minimum radius of 16.25" is enough for the El Capitan cars to look good/operate correctly? Also when the cars are coupled together and on strait track do the diaphragms touch? I'm looking at purchasing the El Capitan set for the purposes of modeling Amtrak's Lone Star in the Early 70's. Does anyone have photo's they would car to share of this set? Thanks. J
As far as how they'd look on that radius, I don't know. I did just run mine around a 9" radius last night and it went around just fine. With the stock Kato couplers I have not had the diaphragms touch on straight or curved track. They do couple close enough to look nice though as a solid train.
A 16" radius should work great. Also, the diaphragms don't touch when coupled, but they are among the best (i.e. closest) spaced cars I have seen. I recently took some measurements, and this is what I found for Kato spacing: Kato Superliner 0.125 Kato Corrugated 0.125 Kato Super Chief 0.135 Kato CZ 0.155 Kato E8 0.235 Kato PA 0.235 Kato El Capitan 0.095 Kato Broadway 0.095 Kato F3 0.310 It's hard to measure accurately, but the above should provide some useful comparisons. The distances are in inches and measured between the closest points on the car bodies (i.e. either diaphragm surface or "back doors" on the engines). I posted my fix for the F unit spacing in this thread: http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?t=122112
Hello and welcome to TrainBoard!! Here are some great videos of the El Capitan on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HznSK-TLfU This one by TrainBoard Advertiser FiferHobby http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvCJ5iK0Xvg
Thanks for the reply's and the welcome to the board. I am new to N scale, but I am going to commence construction of a layout (the Dallas on a Door layout from MRP 2010) soon. So I expect I'll be on here a lot more asking questions as construction goes on. J
Please post some pictures when you start getting your train put together. I have also modeled the El Cap cars in early Amtrak for the Southwest Limited (the SW Chief today) and the Lone Star. Here are some of my cars:
