The Home Machinist!

Thankyou Glenn the antique store owner gave me a rail bender that is homemade and neither me or my son do not understand how it is suposed to work. He said that we are suposed to use a hydrolic ram like a log spliter to do the bending. I will post a pic at some point to see if anyone has an idea how it might work. Is the problem with a tighter radious causing derailing?

Yes, at some point the radius of the rail becomes to tight to allow the flanges of the 4 wheels on each truck to track around the arc of the curve. Also there will be some minimum radius that the cars themselves cannot pivot around, due to the constriction of movement caused by the way the couplers, or draw bars, are pinned to each car. Also, locomotives with three or more driving axles often have a larger radius requirement than the cars, because of the wheel base of the drivers. However, park gauge trains generally are designed to allow fairly small radius track curvature. So the Tom Thumb might even be good down to 15’ or 20’ radius curves.

However these tight radius curves will cause significant flange wear, and often lead to regular derailments as the flanges turn to sharply and want to drive up and over the head of the rail, rather than smoothly flowing around the edge of the head of the rail.

There may be some other track maintenance people following this thread who can provide a more detailed information.

Glenn

thank you again Glenn you have already proven to be a great wealth of information. I have seen your track layout on one of yourposts WOW you have an amazing looking set up and have put a lot of work into it. Im hoping to create a very simple oval around one of my carousels mostley useing rock to level the ground out certainly nothing as fancy or elaborate as what you have. I would love to come see your set up some time and would love to have you see what im trying to do on mine . not sure how the p.m. service works on the forummight be the best way to exchange adresses hope you had a great christmas . thankyou again for your help Stuart

thank you again Glenn you have already proven to be a great wealth of information. I have seen your track layout on one of yourposts WOW you have an amazing looking set up and have put a lot of work into it. Im hoping to create a very simple oval around one of my carousels mostley useing rock to level the ground out certainly nothing as fancy or elaborate as what you have. I would love to come see your set up some time and would love to have you see what im trying to do on mine . not sure how the p.m. service works on the forummight be the best way to exchange adresses hope you had a great christmas . thankyou again for your help Stuart

Are you going to leave it the same gage or re-gage it?
I know for 7-1/2" gage they like to have 30' minimum radius, I'd say if you will leave it 15" -16" I'd want more like 50' minimum.
Glenn and I are both doing 12" builds, and there are a lot of clubs with 7-1/2", so it's something to consider.
Good to hear that it runs, I know Glenn posted some pictures, would love to see more though. What I've been doing, is opening my pictures in "PAINT" and reducing the size to 20%, then they are the right size to post here.

dont know about re guageing sounds like replacing all the trucks might get quite expensive. I had thought leaving it all orignal would be the way to go is there a plus side to narrower width trucks?

With what you are doing with it, and it sounds like not a huge amount of rail is needed, I'd just leave it as is as far as gage.
What kind of track/rail did it come with?

I don't know what kind is it based on measurement of rail?

Is it rail shaped, aluminum or steel, or just steel flat bar on edge?

Sure would be nice to see some pictures of what we are talking about.


JB

Stuart,

I have noticed, no one has mentioned the track sections you said came with the train. You can NOT bend entire sections with the standard rail bender. A standard rail bender only works on one rail at a time. So, if you try to bend an entire panel, you'll need to bend one rail a little bit and then the opposite rail a little bit and keep going back and forth between the two until you get your bend. THEN, the outside or "field" rail will be shorter than the inside or "gauge" rail.

My suggestion is to take the panels apart and bend one rail at a time. Lay out your track plan on the ground first. You can use ground marking paint and mark both inside and outside rails. Pick one side, and bend rail sections until they lay perfectly on your marks. Then start bending the other side until it conforms to the radius needed to make the gauge (15" or whatever you have). Gauge is measured from inside of rail head to inside of rail head. I suggest you use a triangular track gauge to establish and maintain the gauge. The triangular gauge will automatically widen the gauge in the curves to allow more room for the wheels and prevent binding, wear, and rail climb.

When you bolt the rails together (end to end) make sure to leave a small gap between them to allow for expansion due to changes in temperature. The gap you leave will be dependent on size of rail, temperature when the rail is laid, and the amount of temperature swing between coldest and hottest times. Without the gap, you can get "Sun Kinks" on hot summer days due to the expansion of the rails.

If you would like, I can instruct you on how to build a triangular track gauge and the amount of gap to leave. You may not want to do any of this and I totally respect your decision. Let me know if I can be of any further assistance in your new railroad. I love to help.

Good Luck,
Terry

Thank you Terry I will get pictures posted at some time although Glenn has posted some from when he was considering purchasing this set. The rail is rail shaped steel lots of rust on some sections all are 10 feet long mostley straight maybe 80 peices in total so about 400 feet . There are 3 holes on each end and lots of 10 inch flat bar with oval holes that i believe are for conecting the track from end to end. There are a few sections that have a bend at about a third of the way so about 3 foot mark not an even arch though. I am not very tech savy so will see if my son can take and post pics He is a machinest and is in the proscess of getting a new lathe so i am needed in helping him load and ubload this 5000 lb monster in his shop. however im happy that i can still be of some help to my kids plusm he dose fix and assemble most of my oversized toys for me. I have just started moving dirt and seeing how many trees and stumps i neeed to take out for the layout I have a skidsteer and excavator so should be able to take care of this part fairly easily. any and all information is very much apreciated as i really know nothing and really hate the trial and eror method.