Wooden Coaster - Construction of Track

Amnesiac said:
I did find this online fir the Intamin coasters but there aren't really any dimensions given that I can tell.

^That last tidbit really does give the basics of "what makes an Intamin prefab woodie different than a standard woodie"....cool find. :)

This information might prove harder to find than a wooden coaster but does anybody happen to know the track dimensions of any of the major manufacturer's steel coasters? I started modeling an Arrow style coaster track and was just wondering. All pictures of my projects can be seen here. Next up is a water slide model.

Amnesiac - I noticed in this photo you have the bents placed at equal horizontal intervals. In high-stress areas, such as the bottom of drops, they should be closer together.

Yeah, I think someone else also pointed that out. I made the bents at equal horizontal spacing because that was the quickest and easiest way to do it. Plus, that was just a practice model. When I start a new one I will take the spacing of the bents into account for a more realistic model.

I am away from my references at the moment, but "The Incredible Scream Machine" (Cartmell/1987) contains an illustration which is a page from an Arrow marketing piece for the Corkscrew. It gives some dimensions: the rails are 4" pipe mounted on 48" centers, and if I remember correctly, the center spine is 8" pipe. Or was it 12"? :) Anyway, it's a 48" center. I seem to recall that when Apollo's Chariot was under construction, someone went to the construction site and measured and found that B&M also use a 48" track gauge.

Wood track gauge is something like 42-1/2 inches but don't hold me to that; I don't have my reference handy. :)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

two questions to add to this - IS the offset top two layers supported with L brackets on the inside/outside of the track, or just nailed/screwed in, and Why the Steel wheels - why not polyurethane or nylon?

One more question - RideMan - does the 48" refer to the distance between running rails, or the diameter of the spine?

48" is, I believe the measurement from the center of the left rail to the center of the right rail.

Yes, Don is right...it's 48" center to center.

The top layers on wood track are just offset , and if you look carefully you can see that the road wheels ride on top of the whole stack (and so are offset to the outside, so there is no added load on the top side of the track flange. The upstop, obviously, rides under the offset, and the guide wheel rolls on the inboard surface of the flange. The steel wheels work well enough, and I suspect that if we were to see plastic tires on wood trains they probably would not last long against the joints in the track steel. Not to mention that the higher friction between plastic tires and steel rails would make it hard for the train to slide through curves as it must.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I have upload the 3D coaster models into a 3D xml player so you can now zoom in and look at the models from any angle you want. I tried posting them in the forum but itdidn't work so for now you'll have to check them out here.