Minimum Radius BAchmann HO 2-8-0 Locomotive

[DAndrews]

Good Day Folks -- Can someone please advise what is the minimum radius that I can assume for my track plan to assure reliable operation of HO scale Bachmann 2-8-0 locomotives?  Thanks in advance  Doug.

[rogertra]

18" curves, if you really must.

30 inch curves look a lot better.   

Cheers

Roger.

[richg]

From a little search of the HO forum.

http://www.bachmanntrains.com/home-usa/board/index.php/topic,26532.0.html

http://www.bachmanntrains.com/home-usa/board/index.php/topic,17151.0.html

Rich

[jward]

I would strongly urge you to stay away from anything less than 18r.

[MarkInLA]

Ironically my  HO Connie is down due to torn wires. But I have a very sharp curved Shinohara switch to engine terminal which may be even smaller than 18". She just barely screeches through it.. Ouch ! ... 

[J3a-614]

I've run mine around curves as tight as 15 inch radius, with an 18 inch section leading in as an "easement."  This was on a very small exhibition setup for a Christmas window display.

The locomotive went around fine, although it required using the longer drawbar spacing to do so.  What gave occasional trouble were the cars.  Although all were models of cars 40 feet long or shorter, there were problems with the wheels rubbing the brake rigging I had added.  It was interesting in that the squealing you could hear as flanges touched the brake rigging sounded a lot like the flange squeal you would get on tight curves in the prototype.

A couple of other items of note.  This was on a loop as you can imagine, and the dirt would build up to a considerable level on the inside wheels, but the outside wheels stayed relatively clean.  This would show up in a surprisingly short time, even with efforts to turn the equipment and run in the opposite direction.

The other was to take note of the wear on the frog of the one switch I had in this as part of the station scene.  This was with an older Atlas snap switch with a plastic frog.  There was a good deal more wear in that frog after the exhibit than before!  There was some visible wear on outside rail of the curves, too.  Keep in mind this was with a train with metal wheels on everything that was not quite chasing its tail around a small oval for several hours a day over a span of a bit over a month.