Quote from: ryeguyisme on June 01, 2012, 11:35:04 PM
however stating that brass steam isn't going to depreciate in value whether new or old, basket case or mint in the coming years and I'm not talking 2 years in the future, I'm talking 20 years when I'm finally middle aged brass prices are going to be significantly less.

I'll just tell you about my experience. When I was your age, I couldn't afford brass either. But I put a few nickels together and bought a couple of pieces, mostly the less expensive ones. It took me a year to save for each one. I was very confident in my career abilities and assumed that my income would grow over time, and I'd be able to afford them later. Guess what happened. My income went up, pretty drastically. I am in my peak earning years. And that brass is not really more affordable to me now, twenty plus years later. The least expensive ones kept pace with inflation, and the medium to upper end ones appreciated more than that.

I'm not sure why you are so confident that the prices are going to plummet. It's not as if plastic prices are plummeting, they aren't. In fact, the prices of plastic models are soaring, even relative to inflation. The plastic and hybrid models are now approaching those of some of the brass models, yet they are still not anywhere near as diverse. It does not follow that the prices of brass will plunge. Particularly not the prices of new models that will be built from here out - because there's inflation in the world, particularly in the Asian economies where brass has traditionally been made. (This is one big contributor to the rising cost of plastic models, in fact.)

Quote from: Rashputin on June 01, 2012, 07:38:20 PM
I had a pair of the Sunset brass ones but a cat got one of them when I had a layout in my garage.  Concrete floors are not good for brass engines and destroying brass engines is not good for cats. 

Kittyburgers and mittens? 

You probably should be a little more specific as to which 2-8-2 you want to end up with.  Most 2-8-0's had narrow fireboxes that fit between and/or above the drivers. Most 2-8-2's had much wider, longer fireboxes that only had to clear the trailing truck, with attendant changes in the boiler and cab. The reconstruction can often be pretty considerable and I'd guess often involves extending the frame.

Quote from: Rashputin on June 01, 2012, 08:19:32 AM
Bowser offered the L1 as a kit for many years.

At least I remember a lot of people who had trouble getting them to be smooth engines rather than having a waddle and having to redo the siderods and running gear numerous times.  I could be thinking about the Arbor kits, though, so maybe the Bowser stuff is still worthwhile when you find them.

I only did one Bowser kit to completion (I have another on the shelf) but it ran pretty well, certainly well for the day. I had an Arbor kit, and it was a fight all the way. The parts didn't fit well, the mechanism was problematic, geez.

I have to say that none of that stuff is like just opening a Bachmann box, putting a little lubrication, programming the DCC and going out with the next train... times have changed, and as long as they make what you want, a whole lot for the better.

Bowser offered the L1 as a kit for many years.

I like the idea of doing the L1 since to some significant degree the tooling costs are already invested in the form of the K4 boiler, cab and tender.

Quote from: jward on May 31, 2012, 01:45:06 PM
with 25 car trains you won't exceed the strength of the couplers, even on a 4% grade.

coupler failure can come in two forms, due to train weight. in n scale, i noticed a problem on trains of over 50 cars, where the plastic knuckle couplers would ride over each other and ciome apart. ... which brings us to the next problem. under extreme weight, the plastic knuckles have been known to actually straighten under load and release their grip on the next car.

Well, 50 modern freight cars is about 32 feet including motive power, 25 feet with older 40' cars. (Obviously I'm working with HO here.) Those lengths strongly imply a mainline run of over 600 feet, which is pretty unlikely for me given "only" about 600 square feet in the layout rooms.

For those of us in larger scales than N, is there realistically much risk of coupler failure on the types of trains we can run on less-than-hyperbolic sized layouts?

The majority of my rolling stock has Kadee couplers, but to be blunt since I have not had a lot of trouble on the limited amount of track I can run now, I haven't been replacing couplers that seem to work well. I haven't liked the looks of the ones that come in AccuRail kits, so they get Kadees right as they get built, but for example the ones that Branchline use seem pretty good once the heights get resolved properly.

Quote from: jward on May 31, 2012, 12:49:50 PM
most cars to-day come with plastic knuckle couplers. at some point, the weight of the train will cause these couplers to fail. plastic is simply not as strong as the metal aftermarket couplers many of us use. what the point of failure is i don't know offhand.

I knew that couplers like the McHenry et al were plastic and not metal like the Kadees, but fail?  As in the knuckle comes apart, like real trains occasionally do?  Due to weight??? 

I would have thought that the plastic couplers would have been sufficient to pull pretty much anything that wouldn't derail, especially on most relatively imperfect model railroaders' track.

I think most of us are lucky to have 15 foot long passing sidings and yard tracks. If I punched my calculator correctly, that's about 25 older freight cars or maybe 12-13 passenger cars inclusive of motive power necessary to get such a train up a reasonable model railroad grade (say, 3-4% compensated?). Under conditions such as this, say, 25-30 freight cars on a grade with all the power at the head end, how far from breaking the couplers are we?

Code 100, which is 0.100" from base to railhead, is what your old flex track probably was.  It's the approximate equivalent of 152 lb rail (that's what a yard of it weighs in the prototype), which is very heavy indeed. I'm not sure what the Class I's are using today, but 152 lbs in the 1960s was what the very heaviest of the heavy main lines used - PRR over Horseshoe Curve and nearly nothing else. I don't think that any 150lb rail is being laid down today.  Running, for example, a Shay on Code 100 tends to look a little out of place, since most Shays spent their lives on spindly, lightly constructed almost temporary track, probably 75lb rail.

Code 83 (0.083") is what I think most scale modelers use today to represent Class I main lines, similar to the 125-140 lb rail used in the late steam era (at least) by the roads that ran giant locomotives and heavy trains, such as UP, C&O, VGN, N&W. If I had to guess, I'd say that modern welded rail is this size.

Code 70 rail is similar to what AAR calls "medium" rail, generally 100-125lb. It is used in lesser applications such as branch lines, or perhaps the main lines of less affluent or less traveled of the Class I's in the 20th century, or the big Class I's earlier in the century. This would be appropriate for a 1915 version of, say, the NYC or PRR, or for the 1940s versions of, say, the Rock Island branches into the agricultural midwest. I think modern subways are constructed with medium rail today.

Finally, Code 55 is really pretty tiny, and represents light-duty track for branchlines and lightly constructed industrial sidings, etc. Mining or timber branchlines (remember those Shays?) or even a modern siding that only has to accommodate a couple of boxcars at a time would be built with this light rail. You would never see a DDA40x or a Big Boy on such track - the behemoths would likely turn the rail over (literally).

Of course, all of these are relative to HO scale. As you might guess, Code 70 is pretty big rail for N scale, and I presume that the Z scale folks must use something like Code 55 for their heavy main lines.

The color of the ties is a completely separate matter. Black used to be used, but most flex track today seems to be brown - which seems appropriate, since the heavy wooden crossties used tend to be a browner color than black. On the other hand, some of the railroads are now starting to use concrete ties, and as you would guess they are not colored either black or brown. I've seen some new flex track that represents the concrete ties, too. Offhand I cannot remember anyone making brass rail, which is what was common 30 years ago. Everything I can remember in modern production is nickel silver, although sometimes it comes weathered or blackened so it may not always appear to be silver.

Yes, it's a certainty that that old 4-8-8-4 didn't meet RP-25 standards!!! I never ran it enough to literally run the wheels off, though. Interesting finding out about that now.

My Custom Brass H-6 never had trouble running on the club layout back in the mid-90s. I haven't been there in, well, almost twenty years, but I'm pretty sure that the minimum radius was at least 36" as larger brass articulateds (I can remember a DMIR M-3 and an AC-12 Cab Forward) ran without any trouble. (Or at least, not without any trouble that a GP-9 didn't also have... some of our track work was not the best.)

Quote from: Atlantic Central on May 21, 2012, 01:15:03 PMWhat will your grade be? Over 3% - plus the resistance of the curve - two of the best pulling steam locos a out there will likely only pull 20 cars up it.

I don't have the full layout plan in front of me but I think it's 5 turns at 2.4%? It's a little under 24" separation between the grades. If I'm punching my calculator correctly I guess I could do 5 turns at 2% with 36" radius, but either way I don't think it's an extreme helix.  Offhand I don't know how to compute the compensation for curvature, but from your comments above I guess the effective grade will be about 3%.

The helix is a staging area, between the endpoints of the layout, so longer is better, unlike some helixes that are actually in the main line run.

I guess I am fortunate that C&O never ran T-1's on the Mountain or Piedmont Subdivisions, although B-1 and B-3 2-10-2's were pretty common during the war.

Quote from: Atlantic Central on May 21, 2012, 12:58:21 PMI don't mean to be argumentitive here, but for what it is worth, a great many modelers I know have 36" radius and larger curves on their layouts. And based on my conversations with them not one would prefer their articulated locos to be prototypically rigid in the rear, hinged only in the front.

It seems infeasible anyway, so it's a moot point.

QuoteI have seen both prototypically hinged brass and the new Bachmann EM-1's on 36-38" curves - it an't real pretty in my view - with either loco design - the over hangs are pretty bad. ... As I suggested before, in the context of the locos you listed, your curves are not really that big - not compared to the mainline curves these locos ran on in real life.

Well, there's not much more space in the visible part of the basement, so 42" isn't going to happen without pretty much a tear-up and redesign. (Even though for the most part that's only on paper.) I fully realize that even the mine branches that the H-4's ran were probably 100" radius or something insane like that. Nobody but the guy with the 160-acre model railroad can afford anything even close to prototypical.

QuoteMy current layout has curves that range from 36" to 54" and don't run any 2-10-2's or other locos with rigid wheel bases above 21 scale feet.

I guess I'll just be one of those unprototypical folks who insists on running way below scale, then.    The whole point of MY layout is to watch these big locomotives run.

QuoteI currently have quite a few Bachmann 2-6-6-2's and well as PCM 2-6-6-4's and Rivirossi 2-6-6-6's and Proto 2-8-8-2's, all with double articulation. They look very good on 36" and larger curves and the movement of the rear engines is hardly noticable.

Clearly I've been caught without having run them myself. I just wondered given my past experience and that CB H-6 sitting on the shelf staring at me...

Quote from: Atlantic Central on May 20, 2012, 10:26:26 AMI would politely suggest to you that a 30" helix is not a very large radius for any of the locos in question and that from a tractive effort and clearance standpoint you would be much better off leaving them alone.

A reasonable point - the big locos don't have to go anywhere near the one 28" radius curve, and while I agree that 30" is not particularly large, it is in the helix where it's merely a matter of providing clearance. Ie the helix is totally unprototypical to begin with, and moreover it is not a place where one can see the unprototypical overhangs. So from a visual perspective, I have essentially only 36" curves.  (And as you can likely tell, the first ones just got laid down, and I don't even have them powered yet. The only thing that's powered so far is the engine terminal!) As long as the 30" helix is smooth and well built, I don't think I should expect operating problems, certainly not given that the rear engine will be swinging. And the helix is going to be double-track anyway, since it's effectively serial staging. So if 33" were required, I could arrange for that. The helix is in a different room and completely open. I suppose that with a little (more) negotiation I could probably get the permission to build it with 36" / 39" radius if it really made a difference, but my inclination is to think that a helix has to be built well to work at all, and that the difference between 30" and 36" in such cases is not large. But I have no experience with that, so perhaps I'm wrong.

I don't think I care too awfully much about the tractive effort problem as I intend to double-head the longer trains anyway, but granted other folks may not have that intent.

I should also add some background as to why I asked the question. Many, many years ago I had an AHM/Rivarossi Big Boy. It actually did negotiate 18" curves, albeit with so much overhang that it literally sideswiped rolling stock on parallel tracks, even when that was reasonably generous. But... the rear engine didn't swing, and to the degree that we ran it, it was quite reliable. Now this was 38 years ago (gasp), and I have no idea how current models are done. But it did make me wonder if I could arrange for my more modern models to do the same thing on much larger radius curves.

Finally, I also have brass models of some very similar or larger locomotives (I have an H-6, I expect to get an H-7). The H-6's rear engine certainly does not swing, so my track has to accommodate it, and in theory it should. I guess I'll find out in the next couple of weeks when I get the first part of the main line powered up...

Well, maybe not. I still haven't opened it up to put a decoder in it, so I'd have to make special arrangements to try it out.  More stuff to do...

Sorry, I meant that I was wondering if I could fix my own individual samples that way. It seems that this isn't feasible due to the design. I certainly realize that most folks can't afford 36" curves, and I don't have any complaint about the models being the way they are. The alternative is likely that we don't get them.

First, I know why the rear engines of the articulateds are - unprototypically - swinging.

I don't have small radius curves - I have one 28" on one yard track, and 30" in the helix. Everything else is 36" or more. Is there an interesting, preferably proven way to more or less pin the rear engines (of my samples) in an approximately prototypical orientation? Or would that goof up the way the front engines work? This is primarily about the H-4 and H-5 Spectrum 2-6-6-2 locomotives, but for extra credit the same question applies to Rivarossi H-8 2-6-6-6's and, I suppose, the Spectrum EM-1.

Also, I don't have this particular engine, but I do have a lot of big articulateds. One thing that's definitely the case is that when you're running on the minimum radius, that minimum radius track has to be pretty near perfect to avoid trouble. Any kinks, dips, or misalignments on 22" track are pretty likely to cause derailments and related trouble for this loco. And as J said, do take those first runs particularly carefully if you don't have other very long equipment. The overhanging boiler projects a pretty good ways from the track, and even the cab can sideswipe trackside obstacles - especially if you're backing up for any reason.