… just outta curiosity, how many of you super elevate? On my old layout, I had a broad (greater than 36" HO) curve in a prominent place that begged for it!
Superelevation (1:1 Scale) is where the outer rail is 6 degrees above the horizontal relative to the inside rail. Not sure how I know this, but seem to remember my college physics professor was also a foamer.
I recall reading that when passenger and freight ran on the same lines on the prototype, superelevated curves presented a challenge. While they helped to speed passenger trains, the amount of superelevation had to be moderated, else slower freight trains would more rapidly wear down the inside rail.
I did this on my N scale layout. I used .020" Evergreen styrene strips under the outer rail of my flextrack to achieve this, and used .015" .010" and layers of masking tape as a transition under the outer rail. It looks REALLY nice.
If using risers supporting roadbed, simply screw the roadbed down onto the risers, and then cant the risers and screw them to the joists at an angle that seems right. This works for cookie cutter and spline roadbed. I also have saved the clear plastic packaging that tools come in and cut strips out of that and lay it under the outer tie edges along curves. That works well, and it's waterproof...no swelling like cardstock does when you wet the ballast and glue it. Super-elevation is meant to control centrifugal forces, along with easements. Mainly, though, super-elevation moves the center of gravity of the locomotive inward along the radius line of the curve to prevent tipping...and lurch. So, it is only as high as it needs to be, anywhere from an inch to six or more inches, depending on speeds. Coal drags don't need to control lurch, but waiters carrying hot curry soups need it. So, where passenger speeds require it, there will be both eased and super-elevated curves. If you want to know what a slow-moving coal drag looks like on super-elevated curves, look to the Norfolk & Western. Even with the low quality video here, you can easily discern the substantial cant of the Y6b Mallet helping the Class A rounding the curve on the Blue Ridge in the first four seconds. (The second sequence actually has two Y's, not a Class A in second position). My main point of interest is just after the one minute mark. The super-elevation is considerable, and very apparent. After that, the scene changes to a telescopic view of the rear pusher, another Y6b, rounding the curve at an obvious cant. The Y Mallets had 'booster' valves that the engineer could use to admit superheated simple steam to the massive front cylinders. This would raise the locomotive's tractive effort to near 170K lbs. The booster was not used at speeds above where this consist is moving, so I doubt the hoggers had their boosters working in this video.
