What should be the realistic superlevation setting for OpenRails 1.5.1 Stable?

[Guest]

Hi All,

As I was going through the experimental options section, I found something related to superelevation. I wanted to know which of the following settings should be enabled to provide the most realistic banking experience according to U.S.A Freight/Amtrak standards -

Superlevation - 0 mm (min) to 180 mm (max)
Minimum Curve Distance - 10 m (min) to 1000 m (max)

[pschlik]

Best I can offer is setting the "Level" to 6. The level setting sets the limit on superelevation from 80mm (at level 1) to 180mm (at level 10, each level adding 10mm) and most American railroads limit superelevation to 5 inches usually, 6 inches in special cases, so a setting of 6 gives 130mm or a little more than 5 inches.

But there is a lot more to superelevation design than the maximum amount of superelevation so while that might be the 'most' realistic setting possible, it still won't be that realistic overall. From what I recall of that system, you'll usually see too much superelevation as it assumes every curve is taken at the route's max speed. This is why I completely rewrote superelevation for 1.6.

The minimum curve distance setting doesn't matter much, there's no real-life analog for that, but if you set it too big then a lot of curves won't have superelevation. Too short and you might see superelevation in weird places, but that's usually not super noticeable.