So he brought over printouts of the yard ladders and transitions, and I transferred the track diagram onto the plywood in those areas with old fashioned carbon paper.... remember that stuff? lol
Looking good so far.
Meanwhile got all the turnouts, and the first order of flex track is here. This batch of ME turnouts are junk.. unlike previous acquisitions.... as all the switch pivot points are falling apart. I have had to replace a couple throwbars on some of the earlier turnouts, but never seen this issue. These are getting new switch point / closure rails, and adding my own PC throwbars. This looked cumbersome at first, but is making them more DCC friendly, and actually isn't as bad as it first looked. Just demo out the old, slide new rail sections into the molded ties, add one PC tie, and the throwbar. Here's a shot from the feasability study:
Not sure of the order of operations yet, but still have to add the shelving under the basic staging framework, as it is part of the overall support in keeping things squared up and solid. Probably come before all the track in staging goes down.... More on that later.
I do like the modifications on the point rails. How do you hold the new one piece rail in to keep it from an out of guage situation? Since you have this modification down and can make it reliable I would do the same to the Atlas turnouts.
ReplyDeleteHow does your layout deal with temperature and humidity swings? Do you treat the wood in some way?
John,
ReplyDeleteI'd have to tear down an Atlas turnout to see if it allowed similar rebuild, but first off looks like it would be possible. The point/closure rail is pre bent same as my handlay turnouts, then the pc ties do the rest...
The central air is doing the job without sealing any benchwork. I do have one spot on the layout where I see some effects, but I attribute that to a benchwork foldout feature that was aborted early on...