THE EASY STREET TRACK-HOLDING MOVIE PAGE
LATE BREAKING NEWS! - See the 2009 CONVENTION LAYOUT THAT WAS BUILT TO EXHIBITION RUNNING QUALITY IN JUST FIVE MONTHS!
This simple, short, demonstration
video above shows two coupled, standard, 36 ft, Box Cars running
continuously at excessively high scale speeds around streetcar radius curves,
under the force of gravity. The cars intermittently exceed approximately
75 scale mph around the 60 scale ft radius curves.
Note: 1 car length in
one second equals about 25 scale mph.
The video file is in the form
of an animated .gif, runs for about 50 seconds and is unfortunately around
8MB in size. So unless you are looking at this page with a broadband connection,
the video will take anything from 30 to 90 minutes to fully download. We
recommend you access this page again when you can afford to leave you PC
connected for that length of time, right click on the picture above and
choose the "save image as" option. When the picture has downloaded, you
can then view it later on your own machine, off line, at full speed.
The combination of these speeds
and curves are at least an order of magnitude over the operational limits
allowed by any prototype, except possibly a specially constructed "Roller
Coaster"! They are also around twice the expected safe limits for
the reliable operation of standard "toy trains" in HO scale.
The car bodies are unmodified,
standard commercial 36 ft MDC kits, with NO extra weight added. (They weigh
approx 3 oz each). They are fitted with Kadee sprung trucks and 33" Proto:87 wheelsets. The two cars are linked by standard, body mounted,
Kadee couplers.
The trackwork is "EASY STREET" "Cut and Stick"
simulated girder rail, laid (glued) in short lengths of approximately
4", on a small 3' by 2' sheet of unsupported, untreated, 3/16" foam
core board. The outer and inner ovals used 10" radius and 8" radius
curves respectively.
No special construction technique
was used and the track gauge was set without any gauge widening.
Gauge errors of approximately +/- 0.005" were noted at many intervals on
the curves due to imprecise installation.
The rails at the rail joints
were elevated approximately 0.005" for about +/- 0.5" along the direction
of the rails, due to the use of oversize alignment pins. There were
NO transition curves, so the track was either straight, or curved at 8"
radius.
In summary the track work was
of slightly variable gauge and bumpiness, at least of the order which would
be expected in any typical other model layout. However, in this
case, the girder rail did provide the effect of a continuous check rail
around the entire circuit.
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