I'm wondering in everyone's experience what the largest steam engine they could run nicely on 18" and 20" radius curves?
most non-articulated run fine, the bigger, however, less fitting and seemingly apropos to the eye. minimum 24" looks best and should be fine for 2-6-6-2 and 4-8-8-4 articulated. my own experience... respectfully Gary L Lake Dillensnyder
I have a Bachmann Spectrum 2-10-2 and have run it on 15" radii and had no problems and it still looked good too. I would think just about any wheel configuration would run on 18" and up with the exception of articulated engines. Not sure if they would cut that tight or not.
Thanks guys! I figured the articulated Big Boys wouldn't look very good. Good things those didn't come about until after the era I'm modeling!
The reason articulated engines were made in the first place is to have a big engine work on a small radius turn. Have you every watched UPs 3985 take turns in some of the DVDs it's on. I would think that if a 2-10-4 can handle the radius, then a Big Boy would work even better.
