I am considering adding an elevated loop of track to my little 5’x9’ layout. It occurred to me that I really don’t know the best way to do this. I have both Lionel O-27 track and Fastrack, but not a clue which one would be best for this. Should it be supported on a plywood roadbed, or would the track be stable without it? How far apart should the supports be spaced? What else haven’t I even considered yet? Any advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Replies sorted oldest to newest
Well, not sure what's the "best" way to do it, but I faced a similar situation when I decided to add an elevated loop of track to my already built 8 X 8 layout. All of my other track was O-27, so I extended that to the el loop, and supported it on eighth-inch thick hardboard over supports made of dowels and strips of wood. I fabricated extra wooden 'ties' to fit in between the OEM metal ones, and added splines of hardboard underneath the spans, to add some additional rigidity, and fabricated some fences along the curves to inhibit any mishaps! Here's a few pics:
And here's the el in operation:
Thank you Steve. Like your layout.
Hi Papa Dave,
My postwar layout has an upper loop and I used Lionel trestles to support the O gauge track at each joint. On top of the trestles are 1X4 boards that give a little more stability to the track. I also needed 1X4s on the trestle bases to increase the height for clearance. I used small screws to fasten the track through the ties into the 1X4s. The 1X4s are fastened to the trestles with small machine screws and finally the trestle bases are screwed to the plywood base. You can see that I used twin trestles at some points to span the track below. This system has worked out to be quite stable.
Here is a link to a video of the layout which might be useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...jANYXPBFw&t=103s
Good luck with your project! TJ
Access to this requires an OGR Forum Supporting Membership
