Peco Turnouts in a Yard Ladder
I'm still working on the possibilities with my freight yard ladder configuration. I'm using Code 100 track.
There was a time at the beginning that I was considering whether it might be possible to utilize the Peco 'Set Track' turnouts due to their short length. I have REJECTED that idea as the curved diverging tracks are too sharp of a radius.
Next came the use of the Peco 'streamline' turnouts, .... 'small radius size'. One of the major appealing factors about these turnouts is the 'effective radius' of curved portion of these turnouts,...24" inches. My thoughts were that any of my trains that could negotiate a 24" radius curve track, could negotiate these turnouts.
( and yes I understand there could be some instances where long cars coupled to short ones MIGHT experience some problems here).
My next thought was what if i were to do some trimming of these turnouts so to make them fit even closer together? That experiment was less than satisfying when i laid out a string of 4 trimmed turnouts (templates), and compared them a string of untrimmed turnouts. The total length of the ladder was only approx 1.5" difference,....not worth the effort to do all that cutting/trimming.
Thoughts then turned to whether I could utilize the even broader radius of the 'medium size' Pecos. I laid out a string of these alongside the small radius ones. You can see there is quite a difference, so they were unacceptable to me.
I'm still working on the possibilities with my freight yard ladder configuration. I'm using Code 100 track.
There was a time at the beginning that I was considering whether it might be possible to utilize the Peco 'Set Track' turnouts due to their short length. I have REJECTED that idea as the curved diverging tracks are too sharp of a radius.
Next came the use of the Peco 'streamline' turnouts, .... 'small radius size'. One of the major appealing factors about these turnouts is the 'effective radius' of curved portion of these turnouts,...24" inches. My thoughts were that any of my trains that could negotiate a 24" radius curve track, could negotiate these turnouts.
( and yes I understand there could be some instances where long cars coupled to short ones MIGHT experience some problems here).
My next thought was what if i were to do some trimming of these turnouts so to make them fit even closer together? That experiment was less than satisfying when i laid out a string of 4 trimmed turnouts (templates), and compared them a string of untrimmed turnouts. The total length of the ladder was only approx 1.5" difference,....not worth the effort to do all that cutting/trimming.
Thoughts then turned to whether I could utilize the even broader radius of the 'medium size' Pecos. I laid out a string of these alongside the small radius ones. You can see there is quite a difference, so they were unacceptable to me.