[Nick Jr]

weedmic, go ahead and bank the curves. I gradually entered and banked my curves and never had a problem, tried to describe in words, couldn't so took a pic. Both electric and live steam. If your couplers and trucks don't have a slight amount of play you are going to have issues anywhere there is a sudden and minor track irregularity. Smoothly entering curves and banking allows everything to gradually adjust to the new position. Among have a 34" long 1-A-1 Shark nose and 3 axle Heavyweights that have no problem. Seen any issues on my video's??

 

[Greg Elmassian]

The key is gently, and start the banking before entering the curve.

Yours was easy nick, you can do the outside much more easily with your construction.

I considered how he is building his and he basically has to forcefully warp the wood roadbed to generate the easements coming to the curve, and then force the flat boards in the curve into a segment of a dish so to speak.

That is why I said don't do it.

But let's see what he can do. I don't see the benefit unless you are going breakneck speeds.

 

[dmk092]

Wow, neat. Those sharks look amazing. Have an unbuilt bowser t1 kit on a long list of future projects. A mainline passenger train probably looks great hauling across that curve. Probably a little in excess of my needs, but maybe some day.

 

[Nick Jr]

t1 live steamer, Shark big brother to the diesel, please post the build. Do like the way the string looks on the curves, make your curves as wide as space will allow, never know where your future tastes may run. My banking starts AFTER the easement into the curve, where there is a will you will find a way. Reasons not to do it changed from posting #17?????

 

[dmk092]

Sadly no, small bowser ho scale electric kit from the 90s.
Just a bit of overkill for a small narrow gauge prototype

 

[Nick Jr]

I liked the Bowser kits and their locomotives were very good. Basement where I lived at the time was an open frame lay out, never got around to scenery. Only things that changed is location and size, still no scenery.

 

[Pauli]

There is plenty of clearance



My extraordinarily modest empire as it stands right now.
View attachment 65066

It looks to me as you actually have a litte room left between the track and the walls. I would consider pushing the track right up against the wall, making the oval a little bigger. Even just a section more width or length makes differeence.

With a small oval layout, laying track inside the oval can add a lot. With the tight curves you use, you can also use very tight radius switches. And you will probably only use like train consists of like 3 short wagons or so, so a station track inside the oval, and a siding could make perfect sense.

If you can add a straight section in the middle of the 180degree curve, an inside curved track might be possible, making up a bit longer second station track. (Might not be a quite parallell track. You need to experiment.)

If you decide to do a little more than just an oval track, I would consider mounting the track to some board material. Maybee cut to shape, if you need room to stand inside the layout peremeter for operations. Start out by laying out the track unfastened those times you bring out the layout to run. Later, get some snap-locking devices pulling the board edges against each other, and cut the tracks veven to the board sections. One of our mobile club layouts has gone through exactly this evolution. We don't use railclamps for the rail joints at the board joints.

You can paint a landscape backdrop and put it on the wall where the track runs close to it. That does make the layout feel much more spatial! It's very common in indoor gauge 1 layouts. It might be a town, harbour scene or something else. Often an actual model building wall or just some brick or stone wall might be part of a transition between the layout and the painted backdrop. Just building a slice of a model building is of course also a lot less work! Perhaps make a station building this way? The back of station buildings rarely add that much to the layout experience anyway. The front and a platform or two is usually the interesting part.

View attachment 65079

Notice how much nicer the track looks if you paint the sides of the rail sides a rusty-brown! And you don't have to make it as careful as if you were painting fingernails, which is kind of the precision in the picture. I go about it in a less painstaking manner. (On the other hand, I've got a lot of track to paint.) One member here cuts an "E"-shaped piece of carton and uses it to protect the sleepers when painting.

But once again, get up and running ASAP! Any layout is a work in progress, and you need to have running fun to feel inspired to do all the improvements over time.

 

[Nick Jr]

Pauli, thank you for the compliment, but the track and ties are colored because I spray the stain. I do clean the top of the rails just to make it look real. The inside rail is SS so the stain doesn't stick like on the outside rail which is aluminum. Don't know why the ties on the SS track didn't take the stain as well as the Al??