02-13-2009, 03:02 PM
I think the minimum radius is 18 inches on that plan. They designed it to operate with a Milwaukee Road 4 axle F-M switcher and 40'-50' boxcars. If you want to run 6 axle diesels, it would work much better with 22"-24" radius. Looking at the plan, the only place where you are restricted to the minimum radius is at the 2 ends. Could you squeeze in a little more real estate? I'm thinking a 6 inch wide "kick out" at each corner would allow a bit more radius. If you narrow it down to 40", I think you can forget running anything bigger than 4 axle power and 50' cars. Narrowed to 40", you could probably still fit an 18" radius on the #2 end, but the other end would be restricted to 15", maybe even 12" radius.