Re: Balloon loop track question?

Smitty,

The Huckleberry Railroads return loop max curvatures are 21 deg on the East loop and 23 deg on the West loop. I'm writing this from memory so Marty can correct me if I'm wrong. The shop lead is tighter at 28 deg.

All of our equipment will handle the curves but some combinations can max out coupler swing. My personal preferences are to limit reverse moves in the loops. Most are done during photo specials with short trains.

If you are going to build a loop, build it as large as you can for many reasons: wheel wear, pulling resistance and sun kinks to name a few. If you can roll your rail to close to the curvature it would reduce the strain on the joint bars. Use rail anchors.

We alternate direction throught the loops with every train to equalize wear. Each loops has a lubricator oppisite the switch to keep the lubricant out of the village and off the hill. I takes a couple to days to move the lube around to cover the entire loop.

A side note on wheel wear. We have been using a low friction composition brake shoe that is a direct replacement for an AAR1B cast iron shoe with good results. They are much lighter and eaiser to change, but the seem to cause less wheel wear, at the cost of shorter shoe life on cars where the shoes tend to drag, and the shoes are much easier to change than the wheels are, cheaper too.

Hope this helps,

Paul



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2009 10:59AM by Paul Dalleska.