I was finally able to procure a load of ballast from the quarry and began by leveling and track in the front yard. This was, for the most part, a simple matter of spreading ballast. Only one 15 foot section of straight required any real work to get it back to an even grade.
Before ballasting the side and back yard sections I decided to look at my grades. I have been having lots of problems getting up and around Coal Dump curve with anything short of large diesels. So in between raindrops the survey crew went out today and took some measurements…
There is a 270" straight section on the approach to Coal Dump that has a 2% grade for most of it’s length. Coal Dump Curve, a 90% direction change, is 115 inches around and has a whopping 6% grade followed by a short straight section approaching the Indian Hill Bridge which is even steeper at 7.5%. The grade eases on the bridge and the remains at 4% all the way to Pine Summit.
The preliminary plan is to take that long straight and increase the grade to 4%. This will ease the grade on Coal Dump Curve to around 2.5-3%. I still need to measure and take into account that short 7.5% section, reducing it to 4% to get the final target grade for Coal Dump Curve.
I’m hopeful that a 50% reduction in the curving grade will solve my problems. The curve itself is quite wide, around 10 foot diameter. Assuming I could set the long straight to any grade I want to reduce the curving grade further, would you increase the straight run above 4% to get the curve down to 2% ?
No matter how much I increase the grade, I am going to need to build a riser for a set of stairs - currently the track is set on the top step. You have to step over the track which is already 4" above the step making it a long step down. If I add more height here I’m afraid it will make negotiating the steps too dangerous, so new steps will need to be constructed as part of the project.