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4 Responses to Distance Between 2 Mainline Rails
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Depends on the scale you are using (British 1:148, Japanese 1:150, European 1:160) and the length & width of your stock plus the radius of your tightest curves, which determine the “throw-over” of the vehicles on those curves. PECO do a useful (and cheap) gauge to set the “six-foot” in British N Gauge. One and one-sixteenth inches seems to be the useful minimum for UK models, but you need to check the “Throw-over” of your stock on curves (vehicle ends on the outside and middles on the inside of the curves).
On the straight-aways in HO I use a 2 inch on center for separation between your tracks. A model person or track crew could stand between them. You wouldn’t get your hands between cars to reset something. But that would be a realistic spacing. Now in a yard of multiple tracks their might be access for a vehicle between every other track or so to get crews through there to work.
Most double tracks around here are fairly close together. (at least close enough you wouldn’t want to be standing between the two when they both pass. So I’d say the same applies to N Scale in their equal spacing. Sheldon is right though, you must allow for overhang and spread your spacing of your curves. Even the proto types have to allow for that. Now many MRR Clubs will have a very wide separation between tracks. They do it so they can get their hands around the train car without fighting cars on the other track. But tracks out west where they added a second track over the years, but a totally separate road bed. They have the room out in the desert. If you are modeling out west it is possible to allow excessive spacing and still be right. In modeling we usually don’t have the room to space everything correctly and say a switch siding coming out onto a double main we may have correct but our switches and curves are usually tighter causing lots more overhang than the proto types. So using a tight No. 4 switch could cause overhang that would catch a train on the other track. Many people use ready made switches with the switch motors built on the switch which you also need to take into account for room to clear the switch motors and set their tracks to that spacing. I am able to keep separation realistic because I am mounting the switch motors underneath the layout. Newman Atkinson
I worked in a shuttle yard in Houston one summer, And you could have put a truck between tracks. On the same mainline, you could only stand sideways if trains were passing. I think the biggest difference in the track was usage. Give them room for turns and crossings; make it useful to your use. Keep it visual and logical. Or you can google it and be true to the line you are modeling.
The Peco ‘N’ weigh gauge has the distance at 26 mm for 148 scale