June 8-9, 2013
Despite appearances to the former, I have been working on the railway over the past while. Just haven’t had much time to actually write about it.
Where to begin:
The track plan for the staging yard has been (almost) finalized. A couple weekends ago, Cam and I were working on the plan for the benchwork and we got to discussing the end of the staging yard. Specifically, how to terminate it. Owing to a lack of feedback from a much earlier post of mine, we decided on a curved turnout ladder and bending the track towards the main helix. The reasons to take this route as opposed to a sector plate or a transfer table, despite their much lower costs and space requirements, are a longer track for the Port Alberni Freight, a longer tail track, and as we discovered, longer storage tracks and a possibility for a couple loco storage tracks.
So with that plan in place, we’ve been building benchwork to make that happen and I’m pleased to say we’re done the benchwork for the staging yard.
Cam said it might be a good idea to just continue making a mess and finish the benchwork for the entire layout while we have the opportunity, and get it done and over with. Can’t disagree with that, so we’re now working on the benchwork for Port Alberni… Another weekend and we should be done!
Also of importance in this work is how I’m going to be powering turnouts in the staging yard. David Bedard has been a fan of using RC Servos for turnout control and showed me a lot of benefits for using them. Prime among them is the cost. These things are very inexpensive compared to the cost of just the tortoises themselves, let alone the time involved in hooking them up… These things are small, plug and play (literally, no soldering required!), and robust. After all, these servos go into model airplanes which means if they fail, it usually ends up with said airplane corkscrewing into the ground with really, REALLY disappointing results!
As a result of the decision to switch to servos, I’ve got a pair of DS64’s for sale. Make me an offer…
And lastly for this update. Jason Shron (of Rapido Trains fame) will be visiting my layout again at the end of July. He’s expressed interest in participating in an ops session or two while he’s here. After hearing of the progress on my layout (which has been really substantial since he last saw it) he managed to convince me to have one.
I agreed to the idea of a partial ops session (not involving any switching in Port Alberni) and then realized how much work is involved… I suppose nothing lights a fire under one’s ass like a deadline like that! Better get to work!
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