Model Railroading > Engineering an 8 inch radius curve

There is a post from a few days ago with a rough plan for a bookshelf layout. Part is freight, part is subway/elevated, with an attempted at a loop in a very tight space - originally 12 inches wide, but pushed to possibly 18 inches. It was suggested that this would be unlikely.

The only way I could know was to pick up the Island Model Works CTA cars and see what could be done with them. I found a useful guide to widening the radius for another Bowser frame/power truck that seemed to apply to the frame for the Island cars. http://www.trolleyville.com/tv/school/turning_radius/index.shtml

That took the minimum radius of the cars from perhaps 12 to, at this point, at least an 8 inch radius curve. On google earth I looked up some of CTA's loops, and found that at Howard on the redline loops were 200 feet diameter, and at Linden on the Purple, 185~ ft. diameter. The latter would be a 24 inch diameter in HO, which is what people recommended.

These three pictures show the test curve, measuring 16 inches center to center. The car rolls freely through it, although I don't have a power supply yet so I'm not sure what impact that will have. That said, if this does work, this size is pretty close to what I hoped to successfully fit a loop into this layout.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/21/12 08:18 by inRVA.

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I believe you mean an 8 inch radius curve.

On HO, an 8 degree curve would be about 16 feet in diameter.

-LD

Thanks, corrected.

Would you consider other transit properties, current or historic? There are a few models that aren't too popular, but that would work well on tight radius applications.