Narrow Guage Track Help

[greg3]

Hi

I'm currently working on a small scene involving a narrow gauge train and was wondering if anyone has any advice on suitable track. I've got a few of the straight rails but would like to add a curve. I don't really want to use the roller coaster track and a bit of googling has brought up some nice looking 3rd party tracks namely 4Dbrix and Trixbrix.eu so I was wondering if anyone has experience of either (or any other suggestions)  I'm not really a "train person" (yet!!) so any help is very much welcome.

Cheers

 

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

I've just bought some amazing pieces (not narrow gauge) from TrixBrix and I think that these train track are better than the originals

[knotian]

I've bought some 4DBrix switches for standard ga and their products and support are good.

[Dav1d]

There is LEGO narrow gauge curved track - https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=85976#T=P

They also made up and down ramps.

They appeared in 7199  The temple of doom, 7065 Alien mother ship, 6857 The dynamic duo funhouse escape - in grey & black.

Unfortunately they didn't produce points.  

[Laura Beinbrech]

@greg3  Funny that you should post this, because I am planning on ordering some 4DBrix narrow-gauge straight track sections tonight when I get home from work.  I'll be more than happy to let you know what I think of them once I get them & mess around with combining them with my official LEGO narrow-gauge curved track pieces. ;)

[jrathfon]

A word on the curve narrow gauge lego track or aftermarket productions. If you make any two axle bogies (for coaches, etc.) you will have clearance/binding issues on the tight (R24?) lego track with the standard lego train wheels (PF or otherwise). Some people have mismatched the old outer individual grey curved rails from the 4.5/12 V era for larger radius narrow gauge. It would be amazing if a 3D printing outfit made a normal radius narrow gauge curve track element!

[Laura Beinbrech]

2 hours ago, jrathfon said:

A word on the curve narrow gauge lego track or aftermarket productions. If you make any two axle bogies (for coaches, etc.) you will have clearance/binding issues on the tight (R24?) lego track with the standard lego train wheels (PF or otherwise). Some people have mismatched the old outer individual grey curved rails from the 4.5/12 V era for larger radius narrow gauge. It would be amazing if a 3D printing outfit made a normal radius narrow gauge curve track element!

That's good to know:  I've not had issues, but then again, I've always based my bogie designs around the small train wheels....

[Hod Carrier]

I found that standard PF wheels worked OK for my 4-wide TRAXX loco, even on LEGO’s standard narrow gauge curves. I agree that you would need to keep the distance between the axles fairly short to prevent binding, but when I tested the loco it seemed to manage OK. Click

[jrathfon]

My binding issue was more on the powered two axle bogies (shortest axle separation) coming from my boxcar (to conceal PF battery), but had issue with the lego/IJ narrow curves pushing twin axle bogies (as opposed to pulling) and just a bit of increased drag causing the powered bogies to slip. Also issues with running a Blind-Driver-Driver set of standard train wheels on a 4-6-0 loco, again pushing from behind with a powered box-car.

[greg3]

Thanks for all the replies and advice (building railways seems a bit more complicated than I had expected!! ) Fortunately I'm aiming for something pretty simple (a scene depicting a small stretch of a WW1 trench railway)  Anyway, I'll order some of the track and see how it goes!! 

 

[Giottist]

 

On 9/27/2018 at 11:18 PM, jrathfon said:

.... It would be amazing if a 3D printing outfit made a normal radius narrow gauge curve track element!

Such a solution exists: TrixBrix uses 3d printing on a very high quality level, they are not so expensive and very reliable in delivery.

I for my own ordered a bunch of narrow gauge adapters to connect original LEGO curves with straight rails from the 12V era. Unfortunately grey curves from LEGO are nearly unobtainable and TrixBrix curves are a very early product with too few sleepers. TrixBrix may not add sleepers because otherwise they will violate LEGOs rights. But the combination of their dedicated curved rails, annotated as R40+1/2 and R40-1/2 with outer and inner curved rails from the 12V era are really convincing.

Edited September 30, 2018 by Giottist
Link added