On the layout, when I first put track down, I poured concrete to set it on. I thought this was the best way to keep the track from settling and to prevent the ballast mixing in with the soil under the ties. I built and leveled forms and poured concrete to form the roadbed. Trains have been running on it fine since then. However…<\/p>\n
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It turns out that since I poured the concrete in sections that were individually leveled against the preceding section and themselves, the track isn’t really level. This wasn’t as obvious running DCC locomotives, where back-EMF tells the decoder the motor’s speed so it can adjust to maintain speed on grades. But now that I’ve added live steamers, it’s much more obvious.<\/p>\n
The live steam locomotives slow down a significant amount in two places on the track, both curves where–remeasuring–it turns out there’s a significant grade transition that isn’t visible to the eye but is quite pronounced when measured with a 6′ level.<\/p>\n
This means that I’ll have to shim the track level and reballast to improve the running of my live steamers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On the layout, when I first put track down, I poured concrete to set it on. I thought this was the best way to keep the track from settling and to prevent the ballast mixing in with the soil under the ties. I built and leveled forms and poured concrete to form the roadbed. Trains … Continue reading Invisible Grades<\/span>