Super Elevation in Railroad Curves Part 2

Added: 2026-05-04

[00:00:05]Great day mate.

[00:00:19]Well, how do you everybody and welcome.

[00:00:22]Another edition of That's Railroad, where we bring the railroad to you.

[00:00:26]We do. I'm doing it too. And uh This [snorts] is part two of a two-part mini-series on adding super elevation in model railroading.

[00:00:37]And we're talking about super elevation in one-to-one scale railroading.

[00:00:43]So, we went over a good bit of that in last video. We're going to pick up uh as in part one.

[00:00:48]Today's part two, we're going to pick up where we left off. And uh I hope you find today's uh video interesting. I think you will.

[00:00:57]Going to have some cool stuff.

[00:01:00]One thing I wanted to say in the last video, and I'm not criticizing in the last video any railroad out there. But I talked about the car placement in trains.

[00:01:11]And uh specifically for Norfolk Southern. Again, I'm not putting any railroad down, but I want to tell you why they do that.

[00:01:19]>> [snorts] >> Why they put certain cars in the train. So, and it makes a lot of sense.

[00:01:26]Wha- why they do it. Uh and all railroads do it. So, uh let's say you have a 100-car train and you've got a block of 20 cars gets uh set out at point A.

[00:01:40]And then at location B, you get another 20 cars, location C another 20 cars, etc. And so, the train masters put those blocks of cars together whether they be light or loaded or what kind of car they are so that when the train goes to location A >> [clears throat] >> it's only got to cut 20 cars all in one block or a cut of cars.

[00:02:07]Uh and set that whole thing out, come back on the main, hook up, couple together, put your air in, go. Rather than when they get to location A, they pull five cars out of this end of the train, five cars out of the middle, five cars out of the middle.

[00:02:23]That takes a lot of time.

[00:02:25]So, that's why they you have quite a mixed mas- mismatch from our point of view of cars sometimes on trains.

[00:02:39]It's their destination and the time it takes to set them out. Takes a lot of time.

[00:02:45]To pull five cars here out of the train, five cars there, five cars there, etc. As you can imagine. So, anyway.

[00:02:52]All right. I want to clear that up.

[00:02:55]>> [snorts] >> And uh maybe some of you guys didn't know that's why certain cars are in the trains [clears throat] in the position that they are in.

[00:03:05]So, okay. Let's get right into it.

[00:03:09]Thanks so much for tuning in and watching.

[00:03:13]I got my railroading hat on today.

[00:03:15]My Walkersville Southern my good friend Carrie gave me.

[00:03:19]Pretty cool stuff. We're ready to go railroading.

[00:03:22]>> [laughter] >> All right. Well, in the last video, I kind of concluded that I was going to take uh 1/16 of an inch of super elevation out of this curve. This was 1/8 of an inch.

[00:03:42]This is what I had for the super elevation.

[00:03:44]Um So, these little rings here, and I know this is not permanent. I'm just experimenting. Are 1/16 of an inch. So, I have 1/16 of an inch here.

[00:03:56]I have two part board shims here.

[00:04:00]And on the exit spiral I took one of those out and I put two pennies down there.

[00:04:07]Okay.

[00:04:08]So, that's my uh That's what I got going on here. So, anyway, uh we've got a slow train speed.

[00:04:19]And the same thing as before, it's taking Thomas longer about a half a second longer to negotiate this curve with 1/16 of an inch of super elevation in it than it's taking him to negotiate that curve down there with no super elevation in it.

[00:04:43]How about that? And so, let's see what happens when Thomas speeds up.

[00:04:50]Getting through this curve here.

[00:04:54]Okay, he's running a full track speed right now.

[00:05:18]Hold on. All right, we have Thomas uh running full full speed.

[00:05:24]And it's taking him just a little bit less than a half second longer to negotiate the curve down there with no super elevation than it is to negotiate this curve with 1/16 of an inch of super elevation in it.

[00:05:52]Okay?

[00:05:56]Pretty much the same findings. Uh I kind of like think if I'm going to keep super elevation, I would keep the 1/16 of an inch of super elevation in here. But again, it all depends on what train speeds you run.

[00:06:15]Uh so, whether you decide to do this or not. Again, this is just an experiment, temporary thing. Uh these But uh So, there you have it.

[00:06:28]It's a little bit less resistance going through this curve at high speed and more resistance going through that curve at high speed with no super elevation.

[00:06:46]All right. Let's get on to it and I want to show you how uh I talked to you in the first video about how car comes into the curve and it wants to go straight. I'm going to show you a little bit about that here in next. All right.

[00:07:03]Okay, here's another thing I want to clear up because I don't think I explained it real well later on in this video.

[00:07:10]>> [snorts] >> Uh I took a measurement from this point and if we went straight out and then straight down to the edge of this [clears throat] wheel, the outer edge of this wheel. That is the measurement that I am talking about later on in the video.

[00:07:27]Okay? So, I wanted to clear that up.

[00:07:32]Straight out and right here.

[00:07:35]All right.

[00:07:38]Okay.

[00:07:39]Uh Remember I told you there about the cars wanting to go straight through the curves? Well, look at this locomotive what's happening here.

[00:07:48]This locomotive going into the curve, it wants to keep still going straight.

[00:07:53]We're in the full body of the curve.

[00:07:55]Okay?

[00:07:57]So, that super elevation Oh, don't want [snorts] to do that. If I had super elevation in there, then that would alleviate that.

[00:08:08]We'll see. I'll take this down here and we'll look at that. But that's the reason why these front pilot wheels are on steam locomotives.

[00:08:19]Because they greatly help this car negotiate through curves. If this front pilot wheel and uh wasn't on steam locomotives, then this locomotive would want to go right off the track with no super elevation in it. If you had the proper amount of super elevation, that would help get this locomotive to go through if it didn't have steering trucks.

[00:08:45]Um And you'll often see locomotives with two pilot uh axles. That's for weight as well as the back.

[00:08:57]That is the more if you had see one with two, that's also for the weight of the firebox. Heavy fireboxes >> [laughter] >> uh required more than one uh wheel there in the back.

[00:09:10]So, let's take let's take it uh you got a picture of that.

[00:09:14]Let's get down here and take a look and see what that looks like on a super elevated curve.

[00:09:21]And see if there's any difference. I haven't tried that yet.

[00:09:25]Okay, I want to show you something.

[00:09:27]We're right in the uh uh full body of the curve right in the center.

[00:09:33]This measurement from right here to the outside of this wheel was uh 2/16 of an inch.

[00:09:44]See uh how the locomotive's wanting to go uh straight.

[00:09:52]All right. Now, let's get down here and check the other other curve. Again, this curve has no super elevation in it.

[00:10:03]And I'll get this on All right. We're on the other curve here that has a super elevation in it.

[00:10:09]Uh and I check the same measurement here from the bottom of the fireman steps down to here, and it is 1/32 of an inch less on the super elevated track >> [snorts] >> than it was down there on the track with no super elevation.

[00:10:32]So, that tells me that uh the super elevation is helping somewhat to alleviate the centrifugal force of the locomotive wanting to go straight.

[00:10:47]And just off the cuff top of my head right now, I'm wondering if I add more super elevation in, if that would help. But again, uh I don't know.

[00:11:04]That's a lot.

[00:11:06]We'll see.

[00:11:09]That uh I can't measure this, but it it appears like that is even a little bit less.

[00:11:16]Maybe not even a maybe a 64th of an inch less.

[00:11:19]But I don't think I'm going to do that. So, uh How about that? Pretty interesting, isn't it? We'll take a look this locomotive going through the track now.

[00:11:32]Okay, I got to clear Thomas off, get him in the siding, and get this guy going.

[00:11:39]Okay, I got pretty much the same train weight as I had on Thomas.

[00:11:47]And uh I don't have a radar gun, but at the slow speed, it appears to my naked eye like he's slowing down just like Thomas on this super elevated curve.

[00:12:11]It's harder for him to go.

[00:12:14]So, train speed's too slow for the super elevation. It seems like at slow speed, he negotiates that curve better. Let's speed him up and see what happens.

[00:12:28]Okay.

[00:12:30]Here we go.

[00:12:34]Negotiates this curve better at high speed than it did at slow speed.

[00:12:42]But so, it just depends, I think, on the First off is the cosmetics of how you want your track to look.

[00:12:51]And second, it depends on the rate of speed you're going to run your trains, whether to put super elevation in a model railroad curve or not.

[00:13:07]If I was going to run this fast all the time, then uh I would super elevate the curve.

[00:13:16]But I like to run the train slower, too.

[00:13:20]About like that. Let's Let's slow him down. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for tuning in and watching.

[00:13:30]And uh hope you have a really, really, really good day.

[00:13:41]Keep on railroading, my friend.

[00:13:44]That's where it's at.

[00:13:47]All right.

[00:13:54]All righty.

[00:13:55]Here's the uh curve chart that I have in my tamper here.

[00:14:02]And uh like I said in the talked about in the last video, uh this chart is for 1 and 1/2 in of under balance.

[00:14:12]So, I had talked in the talking about um Horseshoe Curve being a 10° curve. So, let's just say we have a 10° curve right here, and the track speed is 30. This doesn't go quite up to 30, but that's 28 30.

[00:14:32]That's uh pretty close. But what you would do, your degree of curvature and your train speed, and then you go up here, and you would put 4 in of super elevation in that curve.

[00:14:50]Again, this is a inch and a half under balance. I have no clue if the the Norfolk Southern there at Horseshoe Curve follows an under balance, whether it's 1 in inch and a half, 2 in, 3 in. I do not know that.

[00:15:06]So, um anyway, at an inch and a half, 10° curve, 30 mph would have 4 in of super elevation in it.

[00:15:20]>> [cough] >> Excuse me.

[00:15:22]So, this is the chart that I have for all the different degree curves and the train speeds. So, let's say here, on our track, our track train speed's 25. So, a 10° curve at 25 mph, I would set that 10° curve up at 3 in of super elevation for our track.

[00:15:51]How about that? That's how you do it.