I'm trying to take a different approach to building a model railroad. Speed of construction is not the goal. Precision of the finished product is.
As I have discovered in modelling N-scale -- the tolerances are more precise and there's less room for error. Much to my surprise I can work in this smaller scale.
With this approach in mind, this summer has been consumed with putting the final touches on Barr Yard staging. This has involved hours of testing the track.
For the most part, the testing went smoothly. An eight-car freight train made more than 90 circuits of the staging yard. It found tight clearances with wiring drops, a turnout needing a guard-rail shim, a switch machine to switch linkage needing replacing.
The big fix centered around the entrance to staging track 9. As the train entered the track, I was mildly concerned about the freight cars snaking on to the track.
I assembled a consist with full-length passenger cars -- and boy did I see the effect of an inadvertant S-curve.
The cars never uncoupled, but it didn't look good. This will be a covered section of layout, so I didn't want to leave any landmines.
A track re-alighnment was required.
Cut out the right hand switch that created the curve , installed a lefty on an adjacent track. Carved out the cork to provide a channel for the throw rod. managed to correctly bend a throw rod on the first try, updated the arduino data file and things are back in action. The white styrene rectangle covers the throw rod channel. (See photo).
The last issue, which seems to have been resolved is fixing a dead spot on the frog of the switch leading into track 0. I shimmed the reverse route guardrail and painted a dot of fingernail polish on the frog.
The takeaway lesson -- this will be the only section of the layout built with PECO track. I have had good experience with PECO before. I decided to use PECO code 80 track for the staging yards because it would be more forgiving.
The flex track does work great, but the turnouts have their deficiencies. I have solved most of the issues, but I know that I will not use this system going forward.
The plan -- to be discussed in a future blog post -- will be to have standards. From a track perspective -- it will be Atlas Code 55, FastTrack #6 minimum switches.
Here are a few pictures as things currently stand.
This photo is looking at the entrance to Barr Staging. The track on the left is the return loop track. This track that will lead from the bottom of the helix, loop around by the wall and approach the staging yard ladder. Note the wiring bridges and servos in the background. In the background on the right is the control panel for the servo routing.
