Topic: The Toronto Railway Heritage Centre - The 7 1/2" Miniature Railway

[ArnoM]

Actually, we consider it "dual gauge" as the switches have been carefully built to handle both 7 1/4" and 7 1/2" gauge.  Obviously, flanges on 7 1/4" gauge locomtoive have to be reasonably wide to work as well.  I am not sure why this decision was made to handle 7 1/2" gauge.  I will see if I can find out.

Initial reason was that we have some rather sharp radii but I am sure Michael wanted to allow 7½" visitors to run to.
The width of the flange does not matter as we are using movable frogs.

There could be a problem with 7¼" fine scale 0-4-0s on the straights because we used 8 lbs and 10 lbs rail which has a rather large radius and we all know the the fillet between the taper of the wheel and the flange must be larger than that of the rail else the wheel will climb on the outside rail in curves.

Before the track is completed and fine tuned we will not really know what we can or cannot do to accommodate visitors.
Arno

[russ]

Laying Track between the Turntable and the Roundhouse!

One of the of the challenges we faced was integrating the trackwork into the radial tracks from the turntable to the doors of the Roundhouse itself.  As per the master plan shown in an earlier post, we wanted to install one set of miniature railway tracks to one of the three stalls to be used for full size locomotive and rolling stock restoration so we could move our miniature railway equipment into this area as well.  We also installed an additional track to act as a place to store or diplay miature railway equipment.

The full size trackwork in this area was to be finished with paving stones so that the puiblic could safely walk through this area without stumbling.  Rubber strips were used between the rail and the paving stones to allow for ocaasional movement of full size railway stock.

The pictures cover the work that we did.

Russ

Click on each image below for a closer look!

[russ]

Actually, we consider it "dual gauge" as the switches have been carefully built to handle both 7 1/4" and 7 1/2" gauge.  Obviously, flanges on 7 1/4" gauge locomtoive have to be reasonably wide to work as well.  I am not sure why this decision was made to handle 7 1/2" gauge.  I will see if I can find out.

Russ  

[TSPH RR 6500]

Hello Russ,

I'm curious why you decided to go with 7-1/2" gauge rather than the "local" 7-1/4"?

[russ]

Planning the railway and starting switch construction
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One of the most complex tasks in building a miniature railway track is the design and construction of the switches. We used a CAD system to sort out the precise details of the miniature track plan and confirm our preliminary work to set the turnout angles. We settled on three switches of 75' radius, one of 60' and one at only 36' radius (but this tight radius is not on the main line). In the picture below (taken last May), we find our crew checking out the designs on a laptop computer in our "executive board room".  At that time, we had begun the process of constructing the switches. In the pictures above, we find our crew cutting and grinding rail. Our target date for completion of the miniature railway track was July 1st, 2009 but in fact it is still not complete as of today (August 25th).  We also find the track and the switches beginning to take shape.

Click on each picture for a closer look!

[russ]

Acquiring Miniature Rail for Roundhouse Park
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Early in the fall of last year, we were made aware of a supply of small size rail suitable for use in the building of our miniature railway in Roundhouse Park.  So the TRHA made the trek to Brantford to visit the recycling company who were offering this rail for sale.   The recycler had a fascinating collection of old engines and other recyclables which captured our interest as well including a crop dusting airplane as shown below.
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However, we finally focused on the task in hand and examined the rail.  As shown in the other two pictures the rail was in good shape and consisted of a roughly equal quantity of 1 ½” high (8 pounds per yard) rail and 2” high (10 pounds per yard) rail.  The rail was formerly used by the Conklin amusement ride company.  Subsequent to the visit, we agreed to purchase the rail at an attractive price.
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Russ
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Click on each picture for a closer look!

[russ]

I am starting a separate topic here to focus on the 7 1/2" gauge minaiture railway being developed in downtown Toronto. In order to properly start this topic, I will repeat the first two posts from another topic where I choronoicled the development of our live steam engine, a Sweet Creek locomotive.  That topic can be found at this URL: http://engineer.therustybolt.com/index.php?topic=347.0.


As I have no doubt mentioned elsewhere in the Model Engineering forum, I am a Director of the Toronto Railway Historical Association ( see http://www.trha.ca ).  We are focused on the development of the Toronto Railway Heritage Centre which will be located at the foot of the famous CN Tower in the heart of downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada within a city block called Roundhouse Park..

The drawing below show the Roundhouse Park Master Plan Concept developed by the IBI Group (a local firm of architects and engineers) which was recently approved by the Council of the City of Toronto.  The marked up version uses the master plan to point out some of the key elements of the plan.  The main museum will of course be located in the stalls as shown and in the original machine shop area of the preserved Canadian Pacific Railways (CPR) Roundhouse.   Cabin D is a full size (1:1 scale) signal cabin that once was located at the Western end of the massive railway yards located around the present site. Don Station used to be at the corner of Queen St. East and the Din River and has now been moved to this site for display and preservation. These buildings have been carefully positioned to relate appropriately to the miniature railway to be completed in 2009.  
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The 7 1/2" gauge miniature railway to be developed to operate on this site is visible in its “figure eight” configuration in the top right part of the plan.  The wye in the lower right will allow us to turn the entire trains around if running in a different direction is required.  At the bottom of the plan, a train shed will be built to house and service the miniature railway’s engines and passenger cars.  It will include a turntable and loading facility.
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“To be continued”

Russ

Click on each image below to expand it!