50Track geometries for 00-Gauge Hornby SeTrack

I have recently returned to mod­el rail­way­ing after a hiatus of over a dec­ade. Since I last mod­elled, things have changed con­sid­er­ably, with the wide avail­ab­il­ity of mod­el­ling soft­ware which allows lay­outs to be care­fully designed in advance — ensur­ing the design will fit in the space, and that the required track is available.

In terms of track, most mod­el­lers now recom­mend Peco Stream­line track for a range of reas­ons includ­ing: it is believed to be bet­ter run­ning, the point radii are more suit­able for high speed run­ning of large locos, and there is a wider range of pre-made track pieces avail­able. With all that said, I still have a large col­lec­tion of SeTrack so I decided to design my lay­out to work with this track to avoid the cost of repla­cing it with new­er Streamline.

Build­ing a basic circle with SeTrack is simple enough, but more com­plex lay­outs can become tricky, and so I decided to look on google for some stand­ard geo­metry lay­outs to help me. Hornby provide a fairly basic lay­out them­selves which is par­tially use­ful for curved points, but I was unable to find any oth­er geo­metry sites that included a com­pre­hens­ive set of cor­rect geo­met­ries. The best I man­aged to find was FreeTrackPlans.com which was a very use­ful start­ing point, but sadly includes sev­er­al examples which don’t actu­ally fit very well together.

Below are a large set of track geo­met­ries I have designed in Any­Rail 5. The Any­Rail plan is also avail­able. I should note that there are some examples below that tech­nic­ally don’t fit per­fectly — how­ever I have restric­ted these imper­fec­tions to instances where the prob­lem is caused by a straight piece which is frac­tion­ally too short. I believe that in a real world mod­el this error is so small that it wont mat­ter, and fur­ther­more that a mod­el­ler could eas­ily cor­rect them by using a longer straight piece and cut­ting it to length. Such very minor mis­matches are high­lighted in pink at the joint in ques­tion. All such imper­fec­tions are with­in the Any­Rail tol­er­ances — as their manu­al says: “Some­times you can make the track fit by using the play (wiggle room) in the track. While this can be con­sidered cheat­ing, some­times you don’t even notice that you’re doing just that when lay­ing real track”.

You may notice a lot of level-cross­ings at the ends of each geo­metry — these are present to demon­strate that the track at the ends is equal in length and the cor­rect 67mm par­al­lel sep­ar­a­tion for SeTrack.

Where shown the grid lines illus­trate 50cm squares for scale purposes

One last thing to note are the fol­low­ing spe­cific­a­tions for HO and OO gauge track stand­ards. The geo­met­ries below are for 67mm Hornby/SeTrack, not for 50mm Peco/Streamline

4mm OO Gauge track geo­metry — Hornby Stand­ard, Peco Setrack, & Bach­mann Branchline

  • Track gauge: 16.5mm
  • Track spa­cing: 67mm (centre-to-centre)
  • Track spa­cing: 37.5mm (sleep­er edge-to-edge)
  • Track width: 16.5mm (rail-to-rail)
  • Rail heights: code 100
  • Turnout angle: 22.5°
  • 1st curve radi­us: 371mm
  • 2nd curve radi­us: 438mm
  • 3rd curve radi­us: 505mm
  • 4th curve radi­us: 571.5mm

4mm HO Gauge track geo­metry — Peco Streamline

  • Track gauge: 16.5mm
  • Track spa­cing: 50mm (centre-to-centre)
  • Track spa­cing: 20.5mm (sleep­er edge-to-edge)
  • Track width: 16.5mm (rail-to-rail)
  • Rail heights: code 100, 83 or 75
  • Turnout angle: 12°
  • 1st curve radi­us: 371mm*

*Stream­line track does­n’t come with fixed curve pieces, how­ever, Peco advert­ise their Setrack as 100% com­pat­ible with Stream­line code 100.  Any curve with a radi­us less than 371mm is likely to cause derail­ments for many RTR models.

Updates

  • 24-Sept-2015: Added 15 new geo­met­ries, mostly of stations
  • 9‑Mar-2017: Added 8 new geometries
  • 19-June-2020: Cla­ri­fied stream­line track curves

Hornby 4 track loop standard dimensions

standard-track-loop

Standard parallel turnout geometries

standard-twin-track-double-turnout-parallelstandard-straight-turnout

Express parallel turnout geometries

single-to-twin-track-express-splitexpress-twin-track-to-triple-track-symmetricalexpress-twin-track-to-triple-trackexpress-twin-track-switchexpress-twin-track-double-turnout-parallel

Angled turnout geometries

twin-track-double-turnout-angledexpress-twin-track-double-turnout-angled

Curved turnout geometries

triple-turnout-on-curvelow-speed-turnout-on-curvequadruple-turnout-on-curveexpress-turnout-on-curvetwin-track-double-turnout-on-curvedouble-track-low-speed-twin-turnout-on-curvedouble-track-express-twin-turnout-on-curvetwin-track-double-90-deg-turnouttwin-track-express-double-90-deg-turnout

X‑crossing and Scissor-crossing geometries

twin-track-double-X-crossingtwin-to-triple-track-passing-pointtwin-track-express-scissor-crossingtwin-track-scissor-crossing-offset

Y‑junction and T‑junction geometries

twin-track-low-speed-T-junctiontwin-track-express-Y-junctiontwin-track-express-T-junctionsimple-twin-track-3-way-junctionsingle-track-3-way-junction

Basic Station geometries

standard-2-platform-station-turnoutexpress-2-platform-station-islandcombination-island-station-3combination-island-station-2combination-island-station-1express-2-platform-station-turnout

Major station geometries

twin-track-island-station-with-double-outside-bypasstwin-track-3-platform-express-stationoffset-twin-track-express-4-platform-stationtwin-track-express-4-platform-station-with-1-bypass-tracktwin-track-4-platform-station-with-2-bypass-trackstwin-track-4-platform-station-with-1-bypass-tracktwin-track-5-platform-station-with-1-bypass-track

Curved station geometries

twin-track-2-platform-station-on-curvedouble-track-3-platform-station-on-curvedouble-track-3-platform-station-on-curve-with-bypass

Terminus station with turntable geometries

twin-track-4-platform-terminus-with-turntable-and-bypass-tracktwin-track-3-platform-terminus-with-turntable

Turntable geometries

turntable-to-4-parallel-tracks

4‑way junction geometries

twin-track-90-degree-underpasstwin-track-90-degree-cross-offset-2twin-track-90-degree-cross-offset-1twin-track-90-degree-crossing-simple-2twin-track-90-degree-crossing-simple-1twin-track-90-degree-cross-2twin-track-90-degree-cross-1simple-4-way-junction

Other geometries

twin-track-express-double-turnout-with-underpass

Geometries by request

Please post any requests for oth­er lay­outs below.

Leave a Reply

50 Comments

AAndrew

Hi Jon, fan­stast­ic resource thanks for pro­du­cing this. I’m strug­gling with try­ing to get a R8074 to run into a par­al­lel through sta­tion. For example try­ing to use Ropley on Mid Hants Rail­way as example. Is it pos­sible? I can get close if i use R8077 and a R600 + R628.

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SBSimon Buckley

Dear John would be able to offer some advice. I would like to mod­el Brad­ford exchange sta­tion in the 1930’s par­tic­u­larly around the the St Dun­stans junc­tion which is a tri­an­gu­lar loop. If I can cre­ate the space I would like to include the ham­mer­ton junc­tion and the run back down to the Adol­phus street goods station

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JSJon Scaife

Hi Simon

I recom­mend look­ing for old maps of the area, import­ing them into any­rail as an image, and then lay­out out track over the top — that is how I cre­ated the lay­outs for the shef­field sta­tions that I have shared. If you need spe­cif­ic advice about any­thing do ask

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SScott

Hi there, some really good points and graph­ics here.
My ques­tion is.

I want a low level non-scen­ic return loop. I believe I can use 2nd radi­us curves. My biggest loco is a B12 4−6−0 with a max­im­um train length of 3 thompson carriages.

I also want to hold a train there, while a second one passes through. Or hold either one, while the oth­er moves off. I have a length of just under 8ft, as my lay­out is just under 8ft by just under 10ft. 

This will be a low level affair so I can have a double track main level with an upper level branch. Hope you under­stand my ques­tion thanks

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JSJon Scaife

Hi Scott

I recom­mend try­ing Any­Rail or an equi­val­ent track lay­out tool as you can then exper­i­ment your­self with what will work.

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MMonique

Hi Jon
I have a OO gauge Hornby Fly­ing Scots­man R1167 (code 100) set and a HO gauge Life-Like Uni­on Pacific T8608AA (code 83?) set.
Is it feas­ible to join them to use in two loops or will the change in track height cre­ate problems?
This idea is more about util­ising the track I have than run­ning both OO and HO loco­mot­ives together.
Appre­ci­ate your suggestions.
Monique

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JSJon Scaife

Hi Monique
There is a good chance you’ll have prob­lems run­ning the code 100 loco on code 83 track as older mod­els often have deep­er flanges on the wheels. The HO loco will almost cer­tainly run fine on code 100 track if it runs on code 83 track.
I’d highly recom­mend test­ing the Fly­ing Scots­man on code 83 track before com­mit­ting to any­thing as it may well “ride on the ties” or have issues with turnouts and frogs. If you find it works reli­ably then there is no reas­on you can­’t mix track for use with both locos. If you have old rolling stock that does­n’t like the code 83 track it is easy to switch the wheels to ones with smal­ler flanges. I would­n’t want to try swap­ping wheels with locos though, it would prob­ably involve a lot of pre­ci­sion DIY.
There are products out there that will allow you to join code 83 to code 100 track without an issue, e.g. Atlas rail join­ers with product code 551. If you have code 75 track then Peco make a track join­er for code 75 to 100 too.
Assum­ing everything does work then I would recom­mend using code 83 on scen­ic sec­tions and code 100 for fiddle yards as the code 83 will look more realistic.

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TTonyM

I attemp­ted to recre­ate the angled turnout geo­metry (the smal­ler of the three) and for some reas­on it does not appear to fit. the R614 cros­sov­er com­bined with the R8072 switches do not pre­serve the dis­tance between tracks to match the R636 Level Cross­ing both on the straight and angled areas. I am using SCARM though and not Any­Rail (I assume you used that one) so the two pro­grams may have dif­fer­ent dimen­sions for the indi­vidu­al pieces but I don’t want to invest in the actu­al pieces or com­mit to the design only to find out they won’t fit on final assembly.

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JSJon Scaife

Hi Tony
The pink dots are where there is an imper­fect but very small mis­fit. This would eas­ily be accoun­ted for by using a piece of flexitrack — it is small enough to not mat­ter I believe

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SStuart

A tip picked up from Mod­el Rail is the Hornby 2nd radi­us 14 curves can be used with the Y points to give a longer straight and min­im­al 50mm between centres.
ALL the Hornby radii can be used to cre­ate a diminishing/increasing radi­us curve which can be use­ful inform­a­tion when link­ing scen­ic and non-scen­ic sec­tions of a layout.
Hornby Large radi­us R8077 & R8078) and Y points (R8076) can be used in com­bin­a­tion for release roads at ter­min­al sta­tions, with the Y con­nect­ing to the diver­ging of the large radi­us points.
Any single Hornby 45degree curve R1 — R4 will con­nect to the diver­ging branches of short Hornby points (R8072 & R8073) the infin­ite radi­us link being formed by a cut length of R621 Flex a use­ful fix when work­ing in O‑16.5 and oth­er light/tramways were odd point-work arrange­ments were used to access water tanks or provide loco stabling off of the single mainline.
Sim­il­arly and half curve (22.5degrees) will work in sim­il­ar fash­ion in com­bin­a­tion with large radi­us points.
Any­rail is use­ful to set out the basic prin­ciples of what sec­tion works with which com­pon­ent to con­struct your needs.
Sec­tion­al track gets a bit of an iffy press BUT it can also provide a work round due to it’s con­stant arc be it 11.25, 22.5 or 45 degrees.

Reply
JSJon Scaife

Hi Stu­art

That’s really good info thanks.

For any­one new to mod­el­ling I would­n’t gen­er­ally recom­mend SeTrack any­way, it’s just there is a lot of it out there that is still per­fectly usable and for “toy train” lay­outs as opposed to “mod­els” it’s quick­er and easi­er to get a work­ing layout.

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RNRichard Noble

Awe­some­ness inform­a­tion Sir!!
Could you pos­sibly post the most eco­nom­ic for point space, a 16 road mar­shalling yard please??

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JSJon Scaife

Hi Richard

I’m not sure exactly what you mean. I assume you don’t want to con­struct a cas­sette or slid­ing sys­tem — you’re look­ing for a 16-road fixed yard?

But I’m not sure what you mean by “eco­nom­ic for point space”?

Is this for a scen­ic area — i.e. a mod­el of a mar­shalling yard, or is it for an off-scene area?

Assum­ing it’s for an off-scene area you pre­sum­ably don’t care about pro­to­typ­ic­al oper­a­tion — you just want to max­im­um ‘stor­age’ in th emin­im­um space or with the min­im­um num­ber of points?

Are you want­ing some­thing double ended (i.e. with a through-track for a loop) or some­thing ‘dead-end’? How many tracks do you need lead­ing into each end?

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RNRichard Noble

Hi ya
Many thanks for com­ing back to me!
The mar­shalling yard is a back­ground area.
I’m extremely pushed for space, in that I want to store 8 coach trains which is fine except that the points are tak­ing up to much space that I haven’t got? So basic­ally I need to get my 16 lanes in the shortest way pos­sible with the points over­all length
Hope that makes sense?
The less space wasted with the points length the better
Many Thanks again
Richard

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JSJon Scaife

Hi Richard
That makes sense. It sounds like you want a ‘sta­ging yard’ specifically

Are you using Horny SeTrack or some­thing else (e.g. Peco Streamline)?
How many tracks do you have com­ing in? Just 1 or more? E.g. if you have 2 could you have 2 sep­ar­ate 8‑lane sec­tions. Or do you need to feed all 16 lanes into 1?
Is it just con­nec­ted at one end or at both ends — i.e. does it need to have a run through part?

Assum­ing a single track entry with no pass-through the shortest length I can see so far would have the points take up 1m of length before your straight sec­tions. 8‑coach trains would be about 2.5m long includ­ing a single-engine or a bit longer for MUs so you’d be look­ing at a total length of 3.5m and a width of ~1.6m. I’ve included a design below.

If you are tight for space you might be bet­ter with a tra­vers­er or elev­at­or. Have a look at https://modelrailwayengineer.com/fiddle-yards/ for dif­fer­ent pos­sible approaches

16-road staging yard model railway

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RNRichard Noble

Hi ya Jon
This is per­fect for what I want to achieve, I can’t thank you enough!!
Thank you again
Kind­est Regards
Richard

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JSJon Scaife

Hi Richard

After think­ing about this some more I came up with an improved design. The length is mar­gin­ally short­er but the main bene­fit is that the width is smal­ler (around 1m rather than around 1.6m) which means the fur­thest tracks will be much easi­er to reach. Note that the light blue parts are shown for design pur­poses but actu­ally form part of the roads them­selves, so the point­work is less than 1m long

If any­one has any thoughts on a more effi­cient design please let me know

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JSJon Scaife

Hi Chris. Agreed — FreeTrackPlans.com is great. I’ve gen­er­ally tried to avoid duplic­a­tion of the info they provide so I can recom­mend a good look at the many plans they have

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ISIain Smith

Hi Jon — really great site — thanks. I am new to using Any­Rail — and plan­ning first layout.Reference the ‘geo­met­ries by request’ sec­tion — top line — second from left — could you post the angle and radi­us of the vari­ous R621 sec­tions you are using, please? I am hav­ing a prob­lem rep­lic­at­ing the dia­gram on Any­rail. Would be much appreciated.

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JSJon Scaife

Hi Iain

There are 4
The one next to the road-cross­ing on the R4 curve is r=54, a=17.5
The one below it on the R3 curve is r=56.5, a=17.5
The longer one on the R4 curve is a cus­tom adjus­ted smooth curve with rmin=52.68
The final one — at the bot­tom of the R3 curve is r=56.5, a=17.5

Hope that helps. If not I can send the .any file over, just let me know

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JJeff

Would it be pos­sible to incor­por­ate a R8075 point on a 4th radi­us R8262 so as to cre­ate a spur off and then to effect­ively have the inner curve back on align­ment (presently a com­plete 180 degree 4th radi­us curve) pos­sibly by hav­ing short R410’s pri­or to the point? Many thanks.

Reply
JSJon Scaife

Hi Jeff

I assume you mean on the stand­ard Hornby 4‑track loop or equi­val­ent 180 curve?

If so then yes, although not without cut­ting one of the R610’s short. I assume you mean R610’s?

You need to use R610 -> R8075 -> R610 -> R610 (cut short) -> R643. This will have the same start and end points as a 90 degree 4th radi­us corner. Note that it does include the 2nd radi­us R643.

If you wanted to achieve the same thing without the R643 you could use flexitrack to cre­ate a piece with a stand­ard 4th radi­us of 572mm and a curve of 11.25 degrees. It is a shame Hornby don’t make one of these as stand­ard as it would fit near per­fectly in a pat­tern of R610 -> R8075 -> flexipiece which would form a smooth­er curve also of 90 degrees and fit­ting into place of a 4th radi­us 90 degree turn

Of course, flexitrack is a good idea any­way as you can then include ease­ments which both look bet­ter and improve smooth running

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IHIan Hunter

Can you tell me the thick­ness (under­side of sleep­er to top of rail) of Peco 00/H0 Stream­line Code 100 track? Every mil­li­metre counts as I attempt estab­lish the gradi­ents on a lay­out that I am planning!
Thankyou.

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BBill

Inter­est­ing thanks, but note that Peco Stream­line do not do curved track so can­not have radii except a min­im­um for the flex­ible track, and those radii are not 50mm apart.

Curve radii for points are ‘small’ at 610mm / 2 foot, ‘medi­um’ at 914mm / 3 foot and ‘large’ at 1524mm / 5 foot.

Also sug­gest adding point angles, 22.5° for Hornby, 12° for Peco S

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JSJon Scaife

Thanks Bill. I have added a cla­ri­fic­a­tion on the curve radii and also added your sug­ges­tion on point angles.

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SSteve

Thanks for the very use­ful inform­a­tion just start­ing out again at the grand old age of 64 Ive finally got the space and the time. now.

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JSJon Scaife

I’m pleased to hear it. This peri­od of being stuck at home at least has the upside that it’s a great time to get back into modelling.

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SMstuart moon

Jon, Is it safe to assume the grid used for the illus­tra­tion is set at 12″ (305) if not what scale did you employ?

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JSJon Scaife

Hi Stu­art. As a former phys­ics teach­er I’ve very much adop­ted the met­ric sys­tem (and I believe Any­Rail soft­ware is from Ger­many) so the meas­ure­ments are all met­ric. Where they are shown the grid lines illus­trate 500mm squares.

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RRick

Excel­lent resource! Even using flex­track you need to know suit­able dimen­sions and a load of oth­er­wise use­less rusty old bits of track can be used as a tem­plate to give the shape for the new track to fol­low. Thank you.

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TTrebobster

Holy grail for quick ref­er­en­cing of con­fig­ur­a­tions. Very much appre­ci­ate the amount of work put in and thank you for sharing.

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AAlan

Great site very help­ful in giv­ing basic design inform­a­tion, thanks for your efforts. I have a question ?
I’m try­ing to visu­al­ise if it is pos­sible to have two circles of track side by side joined with 4 curved points so the circles can be run sep­ar­ately or switched with the points to cre­ate a fig­ure of 8. In oth­er words repla­cing an X cross­ing with points. Thanks for any guidance.

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JSJon Scaife

It’s cer­tainly pos­sible with a single track loop. A double track loop would be more com­plic­ated. I’ve added an image of a single track figure‑8 / double loop layout

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NNeil

Thanks for these. I would sug­gest mov­ing the curved cros­sov­er to its own diagram.
Is there a geo­metry that allows a 2nd radi­us curve in a 3rd or 4th radi­us circle? Some­thing to allow points with the curve on a 3rd radi­us circle.

Reply
JSJon Scaife

I’m not sure which “curved cros­sov­er” you are refer­ring to.
I’m also not quite cer­tain what you mean by a 2nd radi­us curve in a 3rd or 4th radi­us circle? So here are sev­er­al pos­sible answer
(1) The stand­ard hornby circle shows a 2nd radi­us to 3rd radi­us curved turnout geometry.
(2) I’m not aware of any way to do a 3rd to 4th radi­us on a curve without using flexitrack. With flexitrack it can be done.
(3) If you mean is it pos­sible to use 2nd radi­us curves to enable space to fit an inward turn­ing point into a 3rd or 4th radi­us turn then yes it is — you could just modi­fy the stand­ard Hornby loop to do this, or it is pos­sible to do it in a more com­pact way.
I’ve added 2 extra geo­met­ries to show how to do (2) with flexitrack and (3) with a 3rd radi­us, altho it isn’t an abso­lutely per­fect fit it will be close enough real world.

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TBTim Blake

We are build­ing a child friendly lay­out to raise funds for a loc­al chil­dren’s char­ity from largely donated com­pon­ents, so your inform­a­tion was par­tic­u­larly use­ful for design­ing the lay­out using setrack curves.

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JSJon Scaife

That’s great. Thanks for your feed­back. We always wel­come ‘advert­ising’ for any­thing char­it­able, so feel free to let us know more about it.
Cheers

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NNigel

Jon, thanks for your work, shame I only dis­covered after start­ing to lay down my track. Your work, how­ever, has been use­ful in cor­rect­ing my track lay­ing mistakes.

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LLester

Thanks Jon, This has been really help­ful… I’m now going to sit down and digest much of this and then try in Any­Rail to cre­ate my own solu­tions based on the ones you’ve provided here! 🙂

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JSJon Scaife

The radi­us of 4th radi­us is 572mm — so the total dia­met­er will be 1144mm (1.15m or 45 inches). That is to the track centre, so you’d need to add on a small amount for the phys­ic­al space required. I’d sug­gest adding on half a track width at either side, and half a track spa­cing at either side. That gives a grand total of 1228mm of space needed (1.23m or 48 13 inches). I’d want a little mar­gin for error on top of that myself.

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BGBob Goodsir

Hi,
Being a novice at this can you con­firm the appx over­all size of the board i.,e. 1.3m x 1.3m etc.for the Hornby stand­ard 4 loop track.
Thanks a lot.
Bob

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JSJon Scaife

The grid squares are 50cm x 50cm so the stand­ard 4 track loop is approx 1.4m x 2m.
To be more pre­cise I meas­ured it in Any­Rail — with reas­on­able track clear­ance it could be fit­ted as shown onto a board 1.25m x 1.9m.

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GGraeme

Super item, Jon. Sorry if I’ve missed it here, but when you men­tion track spa­cing, e.g H0 as 50mm, how is that space meas­ured? Is it the space between the edges of the sleep­ers of two tracks or say, from track centre to track centre?

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TTK

Thank you for doing this, it has helped me real­ise what can be achieved.

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