A strange marriage

Jay, if it were my stuff I would call it 'A perfect marriage'; the wife letting me run my trains on the carpet!

Rule 1: It's my railroad, I'll run what I like

Jason

You gotta run what you have. The D&RGW f units look awesome. 

Dave

If it works for you, who cares what anyone else thinks. If anyone objects, offer them the option of buying you the correct stuff. 

Simon

Looks great! You can tell your carpet railroad citizens that this is the period where Amtrak took over the passenger service and hadn't got around to repainting the engines yet.

George

yep, what is fascinating to me is that the O scale two rail runs so well on a carpet.  Lionel46 , they look fantastic together on your carpet run.

Or, even simpler, Amtrak had to lease the engines due to its own motive power shortages.

Chuck

Rule #1, it is my railroad and if you don't like it, there is the door!

In the eighties b/4 discovering 2r 0 scale, I had #1 scale 1/32 trains on white carpet using Lagas Creek Scale track.  I saved the carpet by using 6 mil poly cloth under the track.  Glad I did.  When it came time to relocate the trains there were grease markings on the plastic interface but clean white carpet!

Agreed with the negative comments.  That guarantees a time out of anyone's visitation privileges.

Nice engines and nice cars. Run and enjoy them as they are. Perhaps you could carry the story further by creating a model railroad with D&RGW engines and Amtrak cars. If you're looking for a closer match, Atlas O made a recent model of Amtrak F7 #102.

Photo by:

MELGAR

Leroof posted:

yep, what is fascinating to me is that the O scale two rail runs so well on a carpet. 

Only equipment I've had issues with on carpet are Sunset Models. The way the track gives a little, combined with Sunset's usually accurate detail, leads to some shorts as detail parts (cow catchers in particular) come in contact with the rails. Also couldn't get the coupler height right on a couple GGD SP daylight passenger cars, and they kept uncoupling when the track dipped.

But all Atlas equipment on Atlas track, never a problem.

MELGAR posted:

If you're looking for a closer match, Atlas O made a recent model of Amtrak F7 #102.

 

Yes, I've been searching eBay on a daily basis for a while now looking for this engine in 2-rail!

George S posted:

Looks great! You can tell your carpet railroad citizens that this is the period where Amtrak took over the passenger service and hadn't got around to repainting the engines yet.

George

Except the Rio Grande didn't join Amtrak...

Rusty

1983, Rusty, 1983!  Neither did my favorite  The D&H  join at Amtrak's start.  Later they got into trouble for painting the Amtrak red stripe over with yellow going north to Montreal!  Happily I still have my souvenirs of a ride on the Adirondack.

Jason

Running a complete DRGW CZ as a modeler is fine but the prototype was never that way.  The cars arrived from Budd as a hodgepodge of railroads and names and were put in service that way before the official inaugural run and remained that way throughout.

I had hoped that Sunset would have done the FP7s in Amtrak when they were run.  Maybe on a second run sometime down the road?  Amtrak was a strange marriage to start so run what you like whether it was prototypical or not. 

Hi Jay. During the transition to Amtrak in the early 1970's, a lot of Amtrak trains were headed up by private livery-painted locomotives. The San Diegan had Santa Fe power and coaches for quite a while even though they were Amtrak trains, so the DRGW motive power is probably prototypical. But what do I know -- I'm still running on three rails.

BTW, I'm presuming that's Atlas sectional track you're using?

AGHRMatt posted:

 But what do I know -- I'm still running on three rails.

 

40 lashes with a middle rail! 

Simon

rdunniii posted:

Running a complete DRGW CZ as a modeler is fine but the prototype was never that way.  The cars arrived from Budd as a hodgepodge of railroads and names and were put in service that way before the official inaugural run and remained that way throughout.

And they were all prototypical, LOL!

MELGAR posted:

Nice engines and nice cars. Run and enjoy them as they are. Perhaps you could carry the story further by creating a model railroad with D&RGW engines and Amtrak cars. If you're looking for a closer match, Atlas O made a recent model of Amtrak F7 #102.

Photo by:

MELGAR

 

Melgar, I think your above Amtrack locomotive is gorgeous. Arnold

Cool video. I liked the freight train too. 

What radius are you using for your CZ train? Just curious.

Was going through old videos and found this one which is similar to the theme of your train.

Yes, Atlas sectional Matt. Using a mix of flex track and 10" sectional on the straights, but honestly having a little trouble with the flex track (just lack of experience). Much tougher than I thought adjusting the ties to mate with the ends of the rails.

Phil, 49.5" radius on the CZ track, 45" radius inside of that. Working on two more inner loops - 40.5" radius (on the inside below) and 36" radius - with my son, hopefully will have pictures this weekend.

Here's a couple overhead shots of the CZ cars on 49.5" radius. I think the cars look better on the middle of the curve than they do at the end of the curve. That's why Matt (and others) are always advocating for transition curves.

lionel1946 posted:

Yes, Atlas sectional Matt. Using a mix of flex track and 10" sectional on the straights, but honestly having a little trouble with the flex track (just lack of experience). Much tougher than I thought adjusting the ties to mate with the ends of the rails.

Phil, 49.5" radius on the CZ track, 45" radius inside of that. Working on two more inner loops - 40.5" radius (on the inside below) and 36" radius - with my son, hopefully will have pictures this weekend.

Here's a couple overhead shots of the CZ cars on 49.5" radius. I think the cars look better on the middle of the curve than they do at the end of the curve. That's why Matt (and others) are always advocating for transition curves.

I used to have a program that created parabolic curves -- easement in/easement out with varying radius all the way through. Unfortunately, I lost the source code and couldn't update it. I've been trying to recreate the mathematical formula so I can recreate it because it worked well with long rolling stock. The only catch is that the smallest part of the curve still had to be compatible with long-wheelbase steam.

I have been wondering what the magic radius is so that 21" cars don't badly overhand the curves.  The largest I have is O82 which they overhang badly.  It appears that at O100 or greater, your radius of 50", it doesn't look terrible.

Does anyone have a precise answer, at what point does severe overhang stop with 21" cars?  

DETROIT posted:

I have been wondering what the magic radius is so that 21" cars don't badly overhand the curves.  The largest I have is O82 which they overhang badly.  It appears that at O100 or greater, your radius of 50", it doesn't look terrible.

Does anyone have a precise answer, at what point does severe overhang stop with 21" cars?  

Measure the truck wheelbase (truck center to truck center) and multiply it by four. That should give you a good idea for use with body-mounted couplers. The bare minimum multiplier is three. Obviously, bigger radius is better for appearance and operation. Even with 48" radius, there's quite a bit of overhang on a 21-inch car.

Hope this helps.

Thanks, 5x is probably closer.  On 082 (19" x 4 = 80) there is still a pretty significant overhang.  From you pictures that I think would be about O100 it didn't look bad?