Working on the Staging Yard

Recently I've been very busy at work and at home etc. etc. and hadn't much time for my layout. Just in the last few days I could find few minutes here and there to go on with laying track on the staging yard and cleaning up the mess of cables and wires I used for track and turnout servos.
Right now I've put down the 'other side' of the staging turnout ladder and all the four staging lanes. Tracks and turnouts aren't glued to the cork base yet. Next is to connect the feeder wires of track and turnouts to power them correctly and apply the glue, actually latex caulk.
Then, the staging yard will be temporarily completed. I'm not planning to install servos for the second yard ladder and will use the yard as single ended until tracks on the last layout section will be laid down. This way will be easier and faster to adjust the position of the yard ladder if required.

Here are few more photos of the staging yard. Even if not in the photos I've already laid all the tracks and completed the yard.

The second turnout ladder and the first two yard tracks

I've also mounted the servos' control buttons and LEDs on the fascia (left picture) and switches to power the yard tracks and the turnout servo decoder board (right picture)

A switch for controlling power to the servo decoder board of the left layout section (left picture) and a view from below of the staging yard servo decoder board and two servos (right picture)

Yard views from the tracks

See you soon...

Staging Yard

Lately, I've been working on the staging yard section of my layout. As the other three sections it's a removable piece that connects together the 'open' ends of the left and right sections. As a 'by-product' it creates also a closed loop for continuous running.
I planned to have four staging tracks with the outermost connecting to the track on Fruitvale Ave. That's the spur for Owen Illinois Auto Parts industry. By the way, I thought to make this piece of track my programming track as well as an operating spur so I need to do a dedicated wiring arrangement  for that track. Still don't know if it's a good idea, though.
Anyway, I started building the plywood sub-roadbed that I strengthened using a piece of L-shaped metal girder, the same type I used for the three layout sections. Then, I put a foldable leg to support the staging and attached nuts and bolts on the two end to join to the left and right sections.
I glued 3/4" foam sheets on top of the plywood and on top I glued a sheet of cork on almost all the staging area.
Finally, I looked for the best track arrangement for the three #6 turnouts on each side of the yard, the yard tracks and the #8 turnout to the programming track.

On the third picture above you can see how I managed to fix the rails on the junction between the yard and the left section. I put a screw through the foam into the plywood and soldered on a piece of PCB tie (the kind I used for turnout throwbars) onto the screw head.
I found this to be quite good as I could set the right height simply turning the screw while at the same time it's much stronger than gluing the ties to the cork roadbed. I think I'm going to use this also for the other junctions even though I'll have to be more careful in aligning rails there.

As a last note I'll put three Atlas re-railers, I purchased quite some time ago, on the first three staging tracks. Maybe I'll add a fourth later on the remaining track in the future.

See you soon...

More Photos of Track, Turnouts and Servos

As promised here are more photos I took this morning. Few close-ups of turnout throwbars with the actuating spring wire plus shots from below the plywood of servos mounted using the Motrak Models brackets. As you can see in the first picture below I had to solder a PCB tie to the throwbar of the first turnout out of the staging yard since in that exact place there's one of the L-shaped metal girder and it would be very difficult to do the hole for the spring wire. So, I mounted the servo on the side of the turnout and used the tie to move the throwbar. Even if it's not really nice to see I'm planning to have a highway overpass there -to visually separate the section from the hidden staging- and hopefully this will help to hide this tie.

I taped the plastic ties to the foam in order not to lose them before placing under the rails

Servos and brackets fixed below the plywood

To answer a comment from Tom I have to say TVD servos and decoders along with the Motrak Model's brackets are great products. I have no experience with other methods to move turnouts so my feedback could be biased, however I found really easy to mount the servos using those brackets and programming the DCC decoder is really straightforward. In addition the new Quad Servo Decoders you can buy now from TVD are much better than one of the first version I bought one year ago. The new one features adjustable moving speed for each servo output, fascia panels with bi-color LEDs and use the same three-wire cables as the servos for easier cabling. Worth of note is the fact that each Quad Servo Decoder can drive up to six servo using the four outputs. This means, for example, you can drive two servos with one output to move two turnout at the same time. I did this on the two crossovers I have on the first layout section so I could drive all turnouts with just one and a half Quad Servo Decoder.
Overall, I think, TVD's Quad Servo Decoders with Motrak Model's mounting brackets are a really good and easy choice to drive turnouts both manually and via DCC commands.

Finally few more pictures of the first Quad Servo Decoder mounted below the plywood of the first section; the PowerCab USB interface and the AutoSwitch board to automatically switch on and off the programming track when in programming mode and one of the new Quad Servo Decoders connected to the DCC power bus.

See you soon...

First Photos of Tracks, Turnouts and Servos

Here are first photos of the tracks I laid along with turnouts and their servos (mounted from below the plywood, I mean). More to come soon.

See you soon...

Laying Track, Again

Most likely this will be one of many posts about laying track and turnouts. Anyway, this morning I shot few photos of my progress on laying track on the first section I did during the weekend. Cork strips are all down and I started preparing turnouts soldering a feeder wire for powering the frog, made holes for the feeders and started installing the Tam Valley Depot DCC servos and decoder for moving turnout points. So far I installed two of them and I'm more or less happy the way they work. I'm not gluing down turnouts yet because I want to test fit them together with flextrack.
In the picture below you can see the TVD Quad servo DCC decoder and the tools I used. Also, you can see the actual track arrangement I chose. In the first picture you can see I decided to connect the spur for Fairn & Swanson to one of the track serving Johansing Iron Works. This way I can have an additional run-around. In the last picture there's the area of where Cemex Aggregates will be -in place of 23rd St. and Kennedy St.- with the track serving that industry.

See you soon...

Laying Track

Big milestone this one. I started laying down the first pieces of track. Actually not yet tracks, however I marked down where the tracks should be on the entire right section and glued down some cork strips as road bed.

This section is going to represent the area close to Fruitvale Ave., Glasscock St. and will end up the curve to the ConAgra mill and Cemex Aggregates. I'm still in the process of refining the design of the layout that is somewhat changed with respect to the latest published version. In fact, I'm planning to move Cemex Aggregates from the left to the right corner of the middle section. So, instead of 27th St. crossing with Kennedy St. I though to put Cemex Aggregates.
This -in addition to be more close to the order of industries on the prototype- will leave more space for the ConAgra mill better using the available space in the right corner that previously was used simply for scenery.
I'm still refining the layout plan since the current arrangement of tracks at the ConAgra mill doesn't look totally good to me. I'm thinking to have the mill building more closely resembling the prototype -even with a lot of selective compression- using up all the space in the middle section of the layout.
I hope to update the layout project page soon.

In the past weeks I also did some more weathering, well a sort of. I painted a bunch of wheelsets with a brown color to give a rust look. That's not perfect but looks better than shiny wheels.

Here are two Athearn cars with the painted wheelsets.

See you soon...

How I built my #8 turnouts using Fast-Track tools

I just wanted to share how I managed to build #8 turnouts using tools and jigs I bought from Fast-Track. Actually, it's nothing new at all neither any advanced techniques. However, I thought someone might be interested to see how I built those turnouts saving some money and -hopefully- having some fun.

First of all, many of what I'm going to show is either borrowed or adapted from the great documentation, instructions and videos Fast-Track made available on the web. So, I strongly suggest anyone interested in having a look at them.

Second, the idea of building turnouts using templates printed on papers is not new at all. Many have done this before as Joe Fugate for his Siskiyou Line Forum or Evert's thebige61 YouTube video channel, to name a few.

So, it looks like there's no reason to write this post neither to read it. Anyway... I did it.

Let's start. I begun printing a #8 turnout template using the PDF file available on the Fast-Track site, then I cut the left-hand one and taped on a piece of cardboard.
Then, I took some PCB ties and cut them to length and gapped according to the template. Each tie is then glued onto the template with a very small bead of glue.
This step, actually, could be avoided but I found it much more easier to work with a turnout that is fixed on the template rather then align ties and all the rest each time something moves away from its correct position.
That's a picture after these steps

Then, I used the QuickStick ties as a reference to cut to length a piece of rail. This is going to be the first stock rail, the straight one. Now, I placed the rail in the exact final position and marked the part that needs to be filed away in order to give place to the point rail to come close to the stock rail.

I put the rail in the StockRail filing tool and filed it.

Now, I placed the stock rail again on the ties and using the filing jigs to keep it in the right position I soldered the ties.

Pay attention not to put solder where the points need to move or the guard rails needs to be soldered, just solder on the outside of the rail.
This is what I ended up with.

Now it was the time for the diverging stock rail. Again I cut it to length, marked the part to be filed and used the filing jig as I did before.

At this time having one of the Fast-Track jigs makes the difference. In fact, from now on each rail we're going to put down needs to be in gauge with the others. So, I had to use a MicroEngineering code55 gauge to keep the second stock rail at the correct distance from the first one while soldering it to the first tie.

As you can see I started on the throwbar side of the turnout and then soldered all the other ties aligning the stock rail to the template.
That's the turnout with the two stock rails soldered.

Using another piece of rail I made the first point rail. I put it in the #8 frog-point filing tool and made the first point, the curved one in this case.
Building all these turnouts I found useful to file a bit more of the base of the rail then what you get with the filing tool. In fact, for small angle turnouts (I think #8s and above) it helps to have a little more clearance between the stock and the point rails and this can be easily obtained filing the base of the point rail further down the wing side.
Then, I put the point in the exact position and marked the point where it has to be bent and where the wing rail end. I cut it to length and filed the wing rail as per the Fast-Track instructions.
That's the point rails ready to be soldered in place.

Here you can see a detail on the wing rail and the notch used to exactly bent the rail.

I soldered the point in place keeping it at the right distance from the stock rail using the ME gauge.

I did exactly the same for the other point rail and that's the result.

At this point I build the frog using the frog-point filing tool again and then the frog helper tool I bought to solder the two frog rail at the exact angle. Since I have the #6 turnout building jig I decided to get the #8, #10 and #12 frog helper. If I ever wanted to build larger number turnouts I already have the frog tool. I don't think I'll never build smaller turnouts than #6.

And now comes the difficult part. It's time to solder the frog rails and to make sure each rail is in gauge and the frog point was close enough to the wing rails to have a smooth transition of truck wheels. Oops, I forgot to mention that I used a MicroTrain truck with low profile metal wheels to check every step of the building process. I think is very handy to test how the truck goes through the points and frog area before having soldered all ties and rails.
With a little patience that's the outcome.

Note that at this point I hadn't soldered the wing rails yet. Once everything is in place and you're sure wheels go through the turnout flawlessly you can solder the wing rails. It's a little bit easier to make small adjustments with the wing rails still unsoldered if that's the case.

I was almost done at this point. I cut to length the two guard rails using the template as a reference, bent them and filed. Finally I soldered them in place.

I took the turnout away from the paper template and was the time for the last step: the throwbar. Thanks to a tip I read somewhere -I think it was from Enzo's blog "The Valley before Silicon" or forum, I don't remember- I bought HOn3 1/32" thick PCB ties to be used as throwbar instead of the regular N scale ones. HOn3 are wider and it's much easier to drill a hole for the actuating wire with respect to the narrower N scale PCB ties.
I filed the two sides of the throwbar to be sure it would fit freely inside the wooden protecting ties, marked where to cut the gaps in the copper cladding and drilled a hole with a #60 bit.
Then, I used the QuickStick laser ties to keep the turnout, the throwbar and the ties in the correct position and soldered the two point rails to the throwbar. I used a piece of tie to keep the points away from the stock rails while soldering.

That's the final result.

I cut the gaps in order to isolate the frog area as explained in the Fast-Track instruction.

I finally tested that no shorts were present between rails, frog and point and I was done.

Clearly, it took a little longer and it was a little harder than using the turnouth building jig. Though, I hadn't to build a lot of turnouts and in the end I found it relaxing to hand build turnouts.

See you soon...