Rail track

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

Garden rail track design

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

Can anybody recommend a book or website to help me design a small garden ground level rail track for a 5" gauge locomotive. Information required for minimum curve radius, maximum gradient, points etc.

Personal experiences welcome of how to and not to do things.

Bob

[Stuart Smith 5Participant @stuartsmith5]

Bob

I have been looking for the same info and these are two websites I found:

**LINK**

**LINK**

Stuart

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Are you looking at a home garden up and down or a club track? The chief designer at Exeter (EDMES) has gone into great detail in his calculations for things like super-elevations and gauge widening on curves, including transitions. Beyond me but you can contact him by asking on the club facebook page.

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

Baz, just a garden track – probably an up and down "U" shape to start off with. The plot is rectangular, but have existing pond, raised veg plots, garage and other obstacles and its all on a 1or 2 degree slope.

At the same time, I would want to be able to remove the straight bits of track and re-lay for the village fete.

Bob

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

This is an add in the latest MEW, no idea if it's any good but someone here may know.

On second thoughts it might be an add for the bits rather than a book! Ho Hum (on visiting the site they do have some leaflets, instruction manuals etc. for download)

John

Edited By Journeyman on 27/11/2021 08:11:02

Edited By Journeyman on 27/11/2021 08:14:19

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

I am in the process of making some semi portable ground level 5" track. The rail section is 30 x 6mm hot rolled mild steel welded onto 20 x 6 "sleepers". The first 15 m of straight track was fairly straightforward. Now for the first curved section. I have decided to make each 90degree curve to an outside radius of 4.775m. Each 90 degree section will be made up in 3 sections of 2.5m long – again for portability. To get a smooth curve I am rolling 3m lengths, there will be approx 1/2 meter of scrap each end of the curved sections – I am sure these bits will be used along the line somewhere.

First job was to make the rail bending rollers. Fortunately I had 4 nice big ball races from Austin 7 crankshafts which in pairs made the form rolls and a chunk of round Al Alloy to make the pressure roller. Once made I was surprised just how easily the 30 x 6mm section was rolled to the right radius. What I didn't expect was that the steel supplied was obviously from different lots! This meant slight adjustment of the pressure roller at times.

This is the progress so far:-

Bit of a dark photo showing the arrangement of the 2 sets of ball races and the Al alloy pressure roller. The handle was an old gudgeon pin from somewhere.

6 off curved rails ready for cutting and welding to the sleepers. My metal merchant kindly chopped them all to length (70 of them) and all I had to do was drill the 140 6mm screw holes into them and de burr the cut ends.

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