Highway grades

... and over three times the size it needs to be - please don't post HTML to newsgroups!

Well, it greatly depends on your "highway". Interstates get warnings for trucks for even a 3% downhill grade, and I don't know of many over 5%. A four-lane street could be somewhat higher over a short distance... and two lane roads are even less restrictive.

What about just elevating the whole road? Does it _have_ to be at a lower level at the beginning, or can you just have it "appear" on the layout already at the proper elevation on a viaduct?

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Road brides can be quiet steep depending on a bunch of factors. Modeling them can also allow you to mess around with them even more. A 6 percent grade should look nice, but may take up alot of room. How long do you have in length to fit the grade that might be the deciding factor? You can also hide is some or break it up with scenery and building.

The track surrounds the town and is on a 2% grade about half of the way around it to cross back over itself. I need to get over the tracks and "down" into town. Yes, the one end outside of the track will start up in the air, but it needs to come down to town level on the other end of the highway overpass.

I'll not comment on the HTML issue... that has been discussed here previously. Suffice it to say that if you were in my shoes, you would do the same.

dlm

I don't have that much space... maybe three feet at most. That would make the grade around 11%; I don't know what that would look like. I don't need interstate-type grades, but I don't want an old country road "up and over" look either.

dlm

Dan Sounds like you don't have enough room to go down. Does it have to be an overpass, why not make an underpass?

I'm speculating "view block".. _________________________________ Andrew Bunn Ainsley Specialized Transport Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada

"Look" is the keyword here. I-80 over Donner hits 6.5% downgrade, I think. That can be exciting in the winter. I've driven 11% logging roads... well, driven is probably not the word I want here... interesting experience. I have 8% and 9% grades on a ranch property I own, they aren't bad to drive.

But.... what the grade actually *is* versus how it looks to the observer is apples and oranges. What is mathematically unrealisticly steep may not look so bad to the observer. Any way to force the perspective? And Rath is onto a good idea with "hiding" a chunk of it. Like how about a highway viaduct around a curve, so you can't see through it? Ought to be able to work some slight-of-hand with that. Another thought... yesterday (on the way to the hobby shop, in fact) I went over a fly-over junction with a temprary approach that runs beside the uncompleted spiffy-new one. That temporary approach takes some interesting dips and grades and twists... how about a 35 MPH construction zone? Could be fun: I see H0 figures leaning on shovels, cranky supervisors, a truck driver chatting up the blond, tan flag-person....

-dave

I don't have enough room to get under the track either... at the end of the loop, the track is only just high enough to clear the track it corsses over... plus that is at the "other end" of town. I'm prett much stuck with the overpass...

No one ever said that model railroading would be easy... the town is located on a pinensula that allows three sides to be exposed... it would be kind of hard to conceal a view block in there as well...

US95 going into Lewiston ID has an 8% grade for several miles.

I've been on several secondary, but paved, roads that had grades around

10% for perhaps a mile. these are in the Appalachian mountains. Individual short grades (a few hundred feet perhaps) can be well above the 10% value, but probably not on main roads. Many older expressway entrance/exit ramps USED to be steep, but newer roads have reduced these grades considerably. You still find a few of the old steep ones in use, however. and all these values can be exceeded on a model where we use 'selective compression' ideas regularly. It just needs to LOOK believable in it's surroundings, and not ridiculous. It need not be totally correct.

Dan Mitchell ==========

Larry Blanchard wrote:

Well, the only other suggestion would be to excavate, can you take the road lower than table level?

You could also consider raising the whole town up part way to meet it, even on a sloping site, that would give more interesting level variations. Keith Make friends in the hobby. Visit Garratt photos for the big steam lovers.

Daniel A. Mitchell wrote in rec.models.railroad:

You want to see a steep grade, Check out the 610 Ship chanel bridge in Houston.

On older sideroads, grades sometime exceeded 10%, but generally ran 4-6%. On newer highways, grades rarely exceed 3%. On the freeways, most grades are under 2%.

Back in the 60s, I worked one summer for Alberta Highways as a "chain man", the lowest of the low in the survey team. We were surveying a realignment and improvement of an access road, about 2 miles from highway to village, crossing a typical paririe creek, which of course ran at the bottomn of a fairly narrow, steep-sided valley. The engineer in charge laboured mightily to design the road so as to bring the grade down to under 4% - the old road had a 6% grade, and that looked plemty steep when you headed down it in the truck.

The steepest grade I ever rode on was over a pass in Austria in the 1950s - it was about 15%, and that was major scary, let me tell you! Didn't faze the bus driver, though.

Pretty well all layouts I've ever seen had highway grades that much too steep.

Wolf Kirchmeir ................................. If you didn't want to go to Chicago, why did you get on this train? (Garrison Keillor)

=>I'll not comment on the HTML issue... that has been discussed here =>previously. Suffice it to say that if you were in my shoes, you would do =>the same. =>

=>dlm

Dan, I have no problems with you posting in HTML, but would you _please_ set your browser to send _both_ HTML and plain text. Makes it easier for me at this end, since then I don't have to start the browser to read your posts.

Wolf Kirchmeir ................................. If you didn't want to go to Chicago, why did you get on this train? (Garrison Keillor)

=>I don't have that much space... maybe three feet at most. That would make =>the grade around 11%; I don't know what that would look like. I don't need =>interstate-type grades, but I don't want an old country road "up and over" =>look either. =>

=>dlm

Steep, but not too steep - grades this steep and steeper were used, if necessary. Go ahead with your overpass plan - it will look just fine.

Wolf Kirchmeir ................................. If you didn't want to go to Chicago, why did you get on this train? (Garrison Keillor)

He is sending both... that's why the posts are three times too big.

On the other hand, if he'd just set his OWN software to use a large font on the screen, he could post in plain text... like everyone else. I'm quite sure he's not the only person to have vision problems here. Hell, I can make my software use a 2 inch high bold font... and DID, when my eyesight was flucuating wildly as I got my diabetes under control. It isn't an issue of readability for him... that can be addressed on his own system without making his posts nearly illegible and worthless here. This has been explained to him several times.

I'm quite sure someone using the same software here would be happy to help him get it sorted out.

I am somewhat in sympathy, but using Gravity I don't have any problems reading Dan's posts as plain text.

Of course, if he used Gravity he could set his editing and viewing windows to a font size comfortable to his eyes and send it as straight text, saving bandwidth.