Cork, and that wonderful code 55 rail

I finished laying the last of the cork roadbed on the mainline around Ophir. The only cork roadbed still needed now is Durango and Telluride... and I'm out of cork again! So, I'll continue when I get another order placed.

In other news, I finally decided to attempt - or at least explore - what it would take to join code 55 rail to my existing Peco code 75. I found that the code 75 rail joiners will work for horizontal alignment, but of course the code 55 rail height will be too low. I'm trying now to figure out how to hold the two rails in alignment until I can solder them.

I don't have a solution yet, but have been thinking of using a cutoff tool to remove the upper part of a rail joiner in the middle (so that portion has only the metal plate on the bottom). Then, I'd insert both size rails, and bend the joiner at the point where it's just the bottom part - should bend easily right? Get the height right w/some fiddling and bending, then solder it. Perhaps I'll be able to try that in a few days.

Once more, with feeling

There's hasn't been much progress on the layout over the last couple of weeks, but what time I had was focused on (again) getting the movable section of benchwork near Ophir to correctly latch.

A short recap - I had created this section to pull out, using drawer slides. The first attempt, when I laid the roadbed, shows that the drawer slides were somewhat sloppy, and also that if you pulled too far, the entire module dropped out (on my wife's foot - thus the requirement to redesign it!).

So - I replaced the slides with heavy-duty extending slides rated for 100 lbs; the module now slides out much further, and won't fall out w/o releasing latches on each slide. Plus, the module pulls out so far that it should (usually) not be necessary to remove the module.

So last week I laid track over one section, cut the rails, and realized a very tight locking mechanism was needed. I installed a couple of sliding dead-bolt type thingies (that's a technical term, you know - thingies). But, even with those there was a little bit of play that caused track alignment problems.

Finally, just last night, I reworked the benchwork and found a way to attach a suitcase latch (the kind where a tab flips up, then a ring of metal loops around a catch, then the tab is pushed back down). With a bit of fiddling, I now have this attached such that the latch actually squeezes the benchwork slightly, and makes a very solid lock, with no movement at all.

Hopefully, this will solve the problem. It's winter here, and the humidity has been dropping and benchwork wood is starting its seasonally drying and shrinking. During the spring, this process reverses, and it's then I'll find out if the wood changes enough to affect this or not.

Now let's see - with that task finished, what should I tackle next?

It's been crazy busy again, but this weekend I had some time for the layout again, and have been working on the 3-track staging yard at Durango (it actually sits under what will someday - hopefully - be the Ophir loop).

Making tracks at Vance

It was a pretty busy weekend, but I did find time on Sunday for a bit of layout work. I was able to lay both of the 3-way turnouts at Vance Jct, and laid the main from the laundry-room exit tunnel all the way past bridge 44-A on the Ophir low line.

There' s a pull-out section of benchwork just past 44-A, and I laid the first bit of track onto the pull-out and make the rail cuts. No testing yet, so I'm not sure how good it is yet. I've always been nervous about the junction of the rails across those joints, but so far it has seemed easy enough.

My kids were able to back the test train into Vance for the first time Sunday night, and that was a pretty nice milestone to meet.

More photos, and progress at Vance

So, I thought I'd start with a few photos of my wiring panels. Here's a photo of the 1156 lamps above the Durango panel. For my wiring, I've been putting an automotive 1156 lamp on every block, and wiring the panels so the main feed (from the command-control system) goes to a terminal block, gets distributed to a bank of 1156 lamps, then (from each lamp) goes to the block feeder on the terminal block.


Here's a shot of the entire Durango panel. It's mostly empty, since all that's wired so far are the power busses and some of the blocks. Each area of the layout has its own panel, feeding blocks in that area. Each panel is feed from a 4-circuit power bus that runs around the layout. One of those circuits is the main feed from the command-control system, the others (yet to be used) are for 12v and maybe 5v power.


I use the area under the layout for household storage (and cave-exploration by my younger kids!). So, to keep that space accessible all of the panels are hinged, and fold up when I'm not working on them. Here's the Durango panel in its UP position.




And the last show - here's the end of the Ridgway staging tracks, where they terminate in the laundry / furnace room. There's a laundry sorting table (and old counter top) along the wall, and both the lower main and upper main / staging tracks run right along the edge of this sorting table. Because it's often filled with clothes (we do have 3 kids!), I enclosed the tracks. There's plexiglass on the sides, and the top of the staging level is a lift-off piece of bookcase shelving. So - trains are protected, and the shelf is handy for more clothes sorting. Eventually I'll paint and finish this, but for now it's at least protected and the tracks are functional.

I had a good weekend, thanks to my wife who wouldn't let me work around the house and made me just relax. I finished cork roadbed for Vance Jct and the beginning of the wye into Telluride, extended cork roadbed about halfway to Ophir, and rebuilt a moveable section of layout where bridge 46-E will (hopefully) one day reside. This is a pull-out section I needed for access, and getting the drawer slides and alignment issues worked out was a highlight of the weekend's work.