Anyone made custom curves smaller than 0-27

I never herd of anyone attempt a smaller curve than 027. As you stated S. streets 016 and 021 are it. I do know someone taking the ets trolley track and adding the dollhouse flat copper tape down the middle. The ets city street track is on par with 016 though.

Hi Adriatic,

 

      I have bent O27 into O24 (24" diameter measured to the outermost part of the tie) with a homemade rail bender I crudely put together.  My video below:

 

 

I have also bent GarGraves (the usual way, by hand) to the same tight curve.  You can go even tighter, but I haven't done it yet.  I was tired of waiting for someone to manufacture an O24 tubular curve, so I decided to try it myself.  It is actually easier than you'd think.  The K-Line Porter and Lionel handcars look good on the tight curves, as well as most shortened pieces of rollingstock.  Going tighter than O24 becomes problematic with O27 equipment with truck-mounted couplers, but there are solutions to that problem, too. 

 

The inside curved rail of an O27 curve becomes the outside curve of the O24 track, so only 2 rails need to be bent to turn O27 into O24.  And you do have to trim the extra length off of the 2 rails you bend; a Dremel works perfectly for that.

 

Good Luck!

 

Take care, Joe.

 

 

Good stuff Joe as wells as your other video's.

 

Steve

Hi Steve,

 

    Thanks, and I should thank you for all your fine videos.  They have inspired me!

 

Take care, Joe.

Thanks Joe, right up my alley. Wont even have to hit the store if I decide I need it.

 I keep coming back to the small dia. idea, and think its time to try it.

Rollers falling off the center rail could be an issue to.

I do know, any coupling will take effort installing, to get the swing needed. I can use the short PW non-op diesel switcher coupler heads sandwiched between two erector set sections forming a swinging arm and pivoting coupler.

 Im thinking elevated trolley, or bash a Porter & cut down 1 passenger cars length. No pilot or trailing wheels.

 I just like tied track!

 

So the Streets tracks are 16" dia,..that's tight.

 

 

A: I made some 25" curves for a project.  I used Atlas Flexgtrack which required removing the rails and bending them anyway.  It worked and most trolleys and RMT Bangs would run fine on it.  

 

B: Interestingly, in the original K-Line Superstreets catalog (2005), K-Line listed D-12 curves - they would nest (fit right alongside) inside the D-16 curves.  It would have been a neat thing - three lane streets - a lane for a trolley int he middel!

 

D-12 roadway was never produced, most likely because K-Line made a test track and found 'Streets vehciles would not run around curves that tight, but stall.  I verified this: also bent and made one half curve of Atlas flextrack that tightly (it required a lot of work to smoothly bend in that tightly) and the standard' Streets panel vans would not get through it. 

When it first came out, a lot of folks asked at the store how tight a curve could be made, and what would run on it. So I used a bender from Micro-Mark to build a "Death Spiral" using standard curves and Atlas-O flex track for demo purposes. I pulled the rail out of the ties to bend the tightest curves in the flex. On the tightest areas, I also had to increase the tie spacing.

 

Nothing we had at the time operated smoothly below an O-14 curve. Similar to Lee, my Lionel 4-wheel trolley would get to somewhere in the O-12 area and stall.

 

 

That is a great idea, Len2.  Very smart way to test.  

Thank you guys.  At 12" use a trolley turntable instead But that's tighter than I'd need. 16-ish would be plenty, maybe leaving room for signals, and small scenery Id think.