Large Scale Central

NMRA S-3.2 proposed track standard

Track and Trestles
#21

Apologies, as here am I responding to a more than a decade old post again, but I can’t find an agreement to this apparently controversial subject. Have we as a group come to a consensus on the minimum distance between track centres that parallel tracks can run?

My LGB book has a nice diagram but no measurements. I want to find the minimum spacing the outer curve 16000 LGB can be to the 15000 curve. My guess is about 185mm. Can I run long cars on that distance and if a guest brings over a 1:32 long standard carriage compared my shorter LGB carriages, will there be issues?

I note NRMA has stated in a tunnel it should be 13 scale feet centre to centre. But I cannot find curve separation distances. https://www.nmra.org/sites/default/files/d9p.pdf

I was hoping to find a clearance ruler too. There doesn’t seem to be a g-scale ruler on the NRMA site.
Has anyone made an STL 3D print similar to the NRMA gauge? I think being able to 3D print one of these to each of our large scale ratios would be quite handy.

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#22

It has always been so controversial that (I think) NMRA threw up their hands and walked away. There were some strong-willed people who insisted NMRA was a bunch of *** and they’d having nothing to do with them.

Shortly after that incident, they tripped over their own feet by proposing a coupler standard - so that USAT and Aristo cars could connect without problems. Unfortunately, they didn’t understand that there are also F scale (1:20.3), G scale (1:22.5 according to NMRA) and G-1 (1:32) cars to be considered, and by the time that got resolved, the air was poisoned and the proposal was dropped (I think; I haven’t checked recently.)

Practically speaking, if you google your question, you will find many threads here and on MLS on the distance between parallel tracks. And each one asks the same question: what scale are your trains? F scale trains need a lot more clearance than G-1.

#23

Thanks Peter,

I hope to get into F scale, so i used that as my guide for tunnel height and left the tunnels in a straight line. I recently joined Australia’s Garden Railway club out of Sydney, and at meetings they like running their trains on members track. Surprisingly, some of us do drive the equivalent of Denver to LA to get to meetings. So I’d like to be prepared for a club road trip here.

I was thinking that carriage length also would impact on the curve separation. Could a high speed modern stainless steel coach in 1:32 might take up more space on a curve than say a 1890’s era 1:22.5 coach? In this case am I better to take height recommendations from the 1:20.3 and my curve widths from the 1:32 folks?

#24

Yes.

A scale length 1/32nd heavyweight coach can be 36" or more. An F scale coach will be taller but probably less than 30". Of course, it will be wider!

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