Layout totally changing

[Huh? What?]

Thanks to our flooding last summer, we are doing some landscaping to divert future floods. As a result, along the back and one end of the house will be a terrace, faced with pavestone blocks. The capstones are 12 inches wide. What I want to do is run a double track down the top of the retaining wall, with a large loop at each end to send the train back on the other track. The loops will not be on the wall. Instead we'll have posts/roadbed supporting the loops. That will be the main line for the railroad. I can then have spurs and additional tracks running on the terrace itself. I've been researching, and think the 12 inch wide cap stones will be wide enough. Am I correct? Figure 3.5 inch wide track, along the edge of the cap stones gives me 8.5 inches center to center between the tracks. I could move the track .25 inches in on each side and still have 8 inches center to center. Is that enough?

I'm also seriously considering going radio control for it.

 

[dunnyrail]

LGB standard track wil nicely fit on 12 inch width using a couple of points to get the gap correct then creating a simple jig to match the separation. However not sure what you are proposing to run on that width, possibly some products may cause issues if you have them. Likely you would need slightly more width if you have double track on the curves and long vehicles.

 

[PhilP]

Welcome back!
Always a job of work, and longer than you imagine, to recover from these things..

I would come in, a little, from the very edge. You don't want stock falling any great distance, if you should have a derail.

PhilP

 

[Gizzy]

Track centres are 185 mm (7.238 inches) for R3 if you have crossovers with LGB R3 points, but R1/R2 is 165mm (6.496 inches) using R1 points....

 

[PhilP]

With big American stock, I would not go below LGB R3..

PhilP

 

[Greg Elmassian]

That is plenty... as long as you don't do this on tight curves... but you need to indicate the scale of locos and cars you are using...

on straights, you can go as tight as 13 scale feet... that is my yard track spacing.

if you can tell us if you are running 1:29 or 1:20.3 and if you are running 80 foot cars, etc, we can be more helpful on the curves... you are plenty solid on the straight, and mild curves.