N-Track inside corners?

[guppyman]

Has anyone made inside corners for an N-Trak layout? With the design I am going to try to build, I will need 2 3'x3' corners to complete a "U" shaped turn around. See drawing for idea of what I'm talking about:

Has anyone made these? What kind of turn radius can I get doing this? Any creative ideas on how to handle this?

These don't necessarily have to fit N-Trak standards on turning radius.... but I would like to have it at least run smoothly.

 

[GNRail]

I don't know how much space you have or how important the mountain division is but a simple solution is to use standard 3' corners in the following configuration.




What are you trying to run around the corners. We just had our yearly train show and my 85' passenger cars really didn't like our 24" corners (non standard but with maximum radius we could fit on them)



Garry

 

[GNRail]

Here is something at least the shape you were looking for. Autocad Lite isn't the nicest program to sketch with (especially in the hands of an engineer or so the cad operators at work keep telling me)

Basically extended the straight portion of the yellow and blue lines to 8" and 12" respectively. This configuration gives the red line with about a 16" radius, the yellow line with a 17.5" radius the blue with a 19" radius and the mountain division is 32".

You should be able to make these a little bigger by curving the straight sections out a bit.

Hopes this helps a bit.

TTFN

Garry

 

[guppyman]

I appreciate it. I wish I could go with your first suggestion... but space just won't allow it.

The second with the radius's helps a lot though. I have been driving myself nuts trying to figure out a way to make these fit standards in my space.... but then I realized.... The only reason I am going with standards at all is so that I can expand the size of my layout when I build new modules. I have no plans to join an N-Trak group, so these modules will probably never be hooked to anyone else's.

 

[RailRon]

Guppyman, you say that you really don't want to connect your modules to others.
Now wouldn't it be possible to plan one end of your 'straight' modules together with the corner modules, so that you can lay out much broader and sweeping curves? This could also offer more scenic possibilities.

Just a suggestion. (And Garry, please excuse me for spoiling your drawing! )

Ron

 

[guppyman]

Here is where my problem lies..... I have a 12'x12' room that i will be filling. I decided to go modular so that I could work on piece by piece- adding new ones when I get the chance.

Here's a semi-overview of my plan:

What the plan is (right now at least) is to start by building the 2 end modules. I want to get those up and running before I move on to anything else just so that I can run trains while I work on the rest.

I decided to go for N-Trak standards just for grins.... Not necessary, but I would like the track to be consistant on each end of each module... (I want to be able to change it around if I get more space)

One option I have been playing with is to just double track it all the way around and forget having any grade up to the mountain division line....

Anyway.... I am horrible drawing track plans.... and figured this may make it a bit easier on me if I have a set standard to follow so that I only need to get one section at a time planned.

Thanks for the ideas.... I even thought about making the 2 straight modules reverse positions... pull the 3 lines to the back, while the mountain line moves up to the front.

Hopefully, I can decide something before I start building.

 

[garyn]

Since you don't intend to setup as part of an NTrack setup, you might look into the alternate placement for the branch line. I know that a bunch of people were unhappy that the branch line in the original NTrak spec was so close to the 2 mainlines that it looked like a 3-track mainline. NTrak addressed this with an alternate location for the branch line. Only thing is, at a setup someone had to have a pair of conversion modules to go to/from the alternate position from the original.

Gary