Nelson Moyer writes:

"The club to which I belong has standards for wheels, trucks, detection, couplers, weight,, rollability, and center of gravity."

Just out of curiousity, what is the minimum radius on curves, minimum frog size, and maximum grade on your club? 2.5% is a rather significant grade with very few RR grades exceeding that. Off the top, Saluda's short 3 mile stretch with a max of 5.1%, mostly 4.7% is the greatest but rather obscure. The 2.2% of the B&O was, I believe, considered to be a "yardstick" for new rr's being built out west during westword expansion. It is noteworthy that N&W had a max of 1.4% on their east/west Christiansburg/Roanoke/Blue Ridge line, UP did not exceed 1.55% on its Wyoming line, and the WP Feather River line was 1%.

There is, of course Raton and Donner but...

BTW, I should mention that I have a 1.5% grade of about 80 feet [ all hidden ] which leads into my Laramie yard. Every now and then a coupler will fail and I hear the sound of many metal wheels in motion heading for Laramie so, I guess, the wheels roll freely enough. I do have to make sure the runaway has a place to go in Laramie. Incidentally, there was a runaway on the real Sherman Hill back during our time period. A 4-8-4 sitting idle up on the hill, sans crew, decided to roll back down into Cheyenne. Now, you'd think that there would have been time to alert a switcher working the west end of Cheyenne, but, alas, there was not. The 4-8-4 was estimated to be traveling at 80 mph or more when it hit the switcher.

Mike Brock

Trevor Marshall has been testing Sergent couplers for us.  He models in S scale, but his blog mentions a few problems coupling to them because he found that cars on his layout were TOO free rolling.

This lively subject has a lot of tentacles (or arms and legs); and in the end, there is less science than there is art and judgement in determining ideal roll ability.  

Mike,

Sorry for the delay. I didn't have all the numbers, so I had to wait for an email reply from a club member who had the information.


I hope this answers your questions.

Nelson Moyer

Living in Houston, we build our homes on shifting clay. Any house built here that is 40 years old probably needs foundation leveling. Many a layout has been built level, yet with good wheelsets in cars and shifting houses, many layouts must use weeds or some sort of brake to keep the cars from rolling off. I have heard folks longing for the old days with poor rolling cars that tended to stay put.



__________________________________________________

J. Stephen Sandifer

Minister Emeritus, Southwest Central Church of Christ

Webmaster, Santa Fe Railway Historical and Modeling Society



From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...]
Sent: Tuesday, September 9, 2014 10:51 AM
To: STMFC@...
Subject: [STMFC] Wheel Rolling Needs





Nelson Moyer writes:

"The club to which I belong has standards for wheels, trucks, detection,
couplers, weight,, rollability, and center of gravity."

Just out of curiousity, what is the minimum radius on curves, minimum frog
size, and maximum grade on your club? 2.5% is a rather significant grade
with very few RR grades exceeding that. Off the top, Saluda's short 3 mile
stretch with a max of 5.1%, mostly 4.7% is the greatest but rather obscure.
The 2.2% of the B&O was, I believe, considered to be a "yardstick" for new
rr's being built out west during westword expansion. It is noteworthy that
N&W had a max of 1.4% on their east/west Christiansburg/Roanoke/Blue Ridge
line, UP did not exceed 1.55% on its Wyoming line, and the WP Feather River
line was 1%.

There is, of course Raton and Donner but...

BTW, I should mention that I have a 1.5% grade of about 80 feet [ all
hidden ] which leads into my Laramie yard. Every now and then a coupler will
fail and I hear the sound of many metal wheels in motion heading for Laramie
so, I guess, the wheels roll freely enough. I do have to make sure the
runaway has a place to go in Laramie. Incidentally, there was a runaway on
the real Sherman Hill back during our time period. A 4-8-4 sitting idle up
on the hill, sans crew, decided to roll back down into Cheyenne. Now, you'd
think that there would have been time to alert a switcher working the west
end of Cheyenne, but, alas, there was not. The 4-8-4 was estimated to be
traveling at 80 mph or more when it hit the switcher.

Mike Brock

Nelson Moyer writes:

"Maximum grade on the mainline is 2.38%.
Minimum radius on the mainline is 48 inches.
Minimum on branch lines is 36 inches.
Frogs are mostly No. 9 on the mainline and minimum No. 7 elsewhere (turnouts are hand laid in place).
Rail is Code 83 on the mainline, mostly Code 70 in yards and on spurs and branch lines."

Excellent. 2.38% is certainly prototypical and while I prefer #10-12 frogs [ I run 4-12-2's ] the #9's are good as well. I also use 48" min radius and 36" on a hidden staging track. I use code 83 for mainline and 70 for frt yard tracks. I have to laugh. When I built my Laramie frt yd I wanted the ties sunk down into the ground so I hand laid the wood ties and the sanded them down to about half thickness. After hand laying the rails I discovered low profile ties.

Anyhow, the reason I asked about your club's grades/curve sizes was to point out that such sizes that you have help immensely with the need for weighted cars. I have no trouble at all running frt cars with very light weights because the broad curves don't encourage stringlining of frt trains. Of course, tomorrow...

Mike Brock