# Fourteen carriers bunch left and spread out to the right

> A curtain track carrier's spacing along the rail is a direct picture of how much fabric is bunched at that point — a row of them read left to right shows a curtain caught mid-travel.

August 19, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/curtain-track-carriers

Fourteen carriers, hung off one length of track, seen from directly below. On the left they're
bunched tight against each other. Moving right, the gaps between them open steadily, one carrier
at a time, until the last few sit well apart. Near the left end, stamped into the track: T-90.

Nobody drew a curtain in this picture. The spacing did it for them.

## What is a curtain track carrier?

A small wheeled block that runs inside a length of extruded track, with a hook underneath that the
curtain's top tape clips onto.

A stage curtain doesn't hang from a fixed rail the way a domestic one might; it hangs from a row of
these, each free to roll along the track independently of the others. Pull the leading edge and
the nearest carriers move first, dragging the rest along behind them through the fabric itself
rather than through anything built into the track. The track just gives them a straight,
low-friction line to run on.

## Why does the spacing between carriers change along the run?

Because the gap between any two carriers is a direct picture of how much fabric is bunched at that
point, and fabric doesn't bunch evenly along a moving curtain.

Where the curtain is gathered — closed, or partway through closing — its carriers crowd together,
because the fabric itself is crowded there. Where the curtain is pulled flat and open, the same
carriers sit further apart, spread across the length the open fabric now occupies. Unlike [a pit
rail's uprights, which stay evenly spaced no matter what's happening in the room](/stories/orchestra-pit-rail),
a row of carriers is only ever a snapshot of something caught mid-motion.

## What makes a good drawing of this?

Committing to the changing gap rather than smoothing it into an even row.

An evenly spaced line of identical blocks looks tidier and says nothing about the object. The
honest version — tight at one end, loosening steadily towards the other, uneven the way [a spike
mark keeps its true angle rather than squaring itself off into a tidy cross](/stories/spike-mark-tape-cross)
— is what makes it legible as a curtain in motion rather than a length of hardware. Seen from
directly below matters too: from any other angle the carriers overlap each other and the spacing
that carries all the information disappears.

## Who owns the T-90 marking, or the shape of the track itself?

Nobody owns the shape of a curtain track — a channel with a lip that carriers roll inside is a
category of hardware going back decades, not any one company's invention.

A specific extrusion profile and its own numbering system belong to whichever manufacturer cast the
mould for it, the same ordinary case as [a shackle's working load figure belonging to whoever
certified it](/stories/rigging-shackle-and-pin). T-90 here is invented rather than copied
from a real supplier's catalogue, which keeps the drawing honest about describing the idea rather
than one company's actual product.

## Does the same idea apply to anything that isn't a curtain?

Anything made of repeated parts that bunch and spread as the whole object changes state carries the
same information in its spacing — a roller blind's slats, a concertina door, vertebrae in a
skeleton laid out for study.

What makes the curtain version specifically worth having is that the state it's showing is a
moment rather than an end point: not opened, not closed, caught partway between the two, which is
usually the point in the whole sequence that gets the least attention.

## Isn't uneven spacing just what a badly hung curtain looks like?

No — every curtain on a working track looks exactly like this partway through moving, including a
perfectly well-hung one.

An evenly spaced curtain is either fully open, fully closed, or hung on a fixed rail that doesn't
let it bunch at all. A track built to let a curtain travel has carriers that crowd and loosen by
design, every single time it moves. The spacing isn't evidence of anything going wrong — it's
evidence of the mechanism doing exactly what it's built to do.

## Does it print well?

Yes — small repeated wheeled blocks with a clear hook are simple shapes, and the changing spacing
between them is the kind of detail line art handles well.

Cream against near-black keeps every carrier distinct even where they're bunched tightly on the
left. Keep the gap increments genuinely graduated rather than falling into two or three clumped
sizes — the steadiness of the spread is what makes the eye read it as continuous motion rather than
a handful of groups.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the track at [JustOG](/) — how many carriers, how tight the bunching, and what marking to
stamp near the end. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment,
and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

Fourteen carriers, and not one of them evenly spaced from the next.