What minimum radius for 32mm gauge?

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Moonraker

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I am helping a local museum build a narrow gauge railway in 16mm scale. They will be using 32mm gauge Peco track to model a two foot gauge light railway. The layout will be a dog bone shape with reversing loops at each end. They want to keep space as small as possible and will be running only 0-4-0 locos and four wheel rolling stock. There will be no fast running.

What minimum radius would people recommend? LGB radius 1 in 45mm gauge scales down to 427mm radius in 32mm gauge. Is that a reasonable way to go?

Regards
Peter Lucas
MyLocoSound
 
I've heard anecdotally that 5x the longest wheelbase is a good rule of thumb. So an 0-4-0 with a 60mm wheelbase should get round a 300mm radius curve. In practice there's a bunch of other factors to consider as well such as coupling swing, clearance to lineside objects etc.
 
Some years ago I laid Peco 32mm NG Flexi @ 900mm radius, using a "track setter" style template; this was necessary on account of the available space. I found that my (4-wheel) rolling stock wheels would "bind" on the curves such that my 2 steamies couldn't pull more than a couple of wagons, because the gauge of the track tightened when curved.

So I switched to 45mm gauge, re-wheeled my rolling stock, and found that Piko (not Peco) "Setrack" at Radius 3 (922mm radius) fits the space. I don't get binding or derailments any more. That said, it sounds as if Moonraker doesn't have a choice in the matter.

For a 30 inch (nominal 750mm) radius I would agree that Setrack is necessary.
 
I agree with Korm, unless building one's own track (e.g. increasing the gauge by perhaps 0.5 or 1mm) then Faller's track at about 14" radius is about as tight as one can go. For a layout built like this see: http://mdlr.co.uk/ff.html

Cheers,
 
Last edited:
Thanks for everybody's help. We found that we could use 600mm radius which seems okay for the 0-4-0 loco and four wheel wagons which will be used. We will now do some testing to see if body mounted Kadee couplers can be used or if we need 3 link.

Regards
Peter Lucas
MyLocoSound
 
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