On my visits to various forums, (one such is handlaid track on Yahoo) I've found some information on guard rail lengths of prototype turnouts. Seems that the UP on their number 10s had guard rails that were 16.6 feet long, New York Central had them 15.5 feet long.
Although we are limited (somewhat) to the NMRA standards primilarly in the frog design, theres no reason why we couldn't emulate the prototype's guard rails. I intend to modify my turnouts to follow suit, (especially in the number 10 and 12's).
Another consideration is for the foreground track, since we are missing tie plates, fish plates, re-enforcing straps, guard rail braces and the like our turnouts kind of look somewhat bare when compared to the HO counter parts. This can be remedied to some degree (keeping in mind practicalities of scale) I will model the most obvious of the details seen, (guard rail braces, fish plates, and perhaps if someone comes out with code 55 tie plates include them also.
The above needs to be kept in perspective though, and not carried out with too much diligence. after 2 feet of distance from the viewer the inclusion of some of the details would be lost, and the question of diminishing returns comes to play.
One could model every turnout to the Ninth degree for the entire layout, but I cannot see why one would want to utilize their modeling time to model turnouts to that level, when it could be better spent on other facets to the hobby with increased returns on your efforts.
Rob
|