Super elevation

belg

Member
I know I'm putting the cart in front of the horse but now that the ballast has been installed I find that one curve sucked down on the wrong side and lays the cars over to the wrong side as well. Does any one have any solutions for this, that don't require
loosening up the ballast? I use Kato track if that makes any difference? And if the only solution is to remove the ballast then a short description of this process would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks Pat
 

ezdays

Out AZ way
Assuming you used a white glue solution to hold the ballast, you can soak it in warm water for a few minutes and it will loosen up enought to repostion your track. I had some track shift while ballasting and caused a lot of derails. I soaked the track, and held it in place with nails, pins screws and clamps until the ballast dried again.

Don
 

Jaws

New Member
A solution I have used successfully where I used cork roadbed was to loosen the cork by running a broad (putty) knife under the cork. If you are lucky, the cork will come up reasonably well in the area you want to raise.

I then used (in my case 16 ga) wire which I glued about 1/8 inch inside the edge of the cork. This raised the elevation and I used contact cement to glue everything back in palce. A little added ballast and white glue made it look just like reast of the ballasted track.

Another trick is, using a six inch long level to attain the proper super and mark it on the level (edge of bubble). All supers are now pretty well perfect and uniform throughout the curve.

I have now been using this technique for all my superelevations and it works fine.
 
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