06-10-2010, 12:31 PM
MasonJar Wrote:Hi Josh,
You need two of the three pieces of information to get the other...
Grade% = rise/run*100
So if you need to go up 22" (rise), and you have 60 feet (run) to do it, you can have:
Grade% = 22"/(60feetx12inches/foot)*100
Grade% = about 3% which is reasonable.
If your grade has curves, it will effectively be steeper, as it will take more power to move the same cars up and around at the same time. Or you need to have a longer run.
Andrew
I may be mis-understanding your calculations, but 60 x 12 is 720 inches. So, a rise of 22 inches in 720 inches is 3.5%. 3.5% is a bit steep for the prototype, but not too bad for model railroading. You would just need to add more power to the train. I don't know how long you want your trains to be, but that is the main short coming of the elevator in ho scale. You are then limited to what I would consider very short trains. Any sort of tight curves would put more load on locomotives pulling trains up the hill, but some long gentle "S" curves will add extra distance without putting so much load on the power. If you have room for some "S" curves with at least a 48 inch radius, and bigger if possible, you could add extra inches to the distance it takes to go up a level.
One thought that occurs to me is to make it a two level layout instead of three. Put the entire steel mill on the upper level using peninsulas in the center of the oval off the 20 foot wall oposite the door. Then you could do a two turn nolix around the walls between the lower and upper level. If the spur on the peninsulas were all stubs with run around tracks or wyes where the peninsulas joined the main benchwork, and the peninsulas were narrowed at the joint so that you could fit in for a better reach, you could make the peninsulas as wide as needed for the structures and the tracks would all be near the edge of the benchwork.