Three Down, Three to go

Three of the approach tracks to the staging turntable formed tonight’s subject. This proceeded more or less as planned, although the special gauge didn’t prove as useful as I’d hoped. Here I am, using it to solder down the far end of the turntable (e and f in the plan). I needn’t have bothered. It turns […]

Progress on the Staging Turntable

Happy New Year! It’s been a busy holiday season for us, and so, nothing has happened on the layout in weeks. However, now I’m back in the swing again, and making progress. I soldered the “rails” half-way on the turntable tonight. As I mentioned previously, I am only fixing one end to start, and will […]

More Turntable Planning

Honest, I’m not procrastinating, really! Sometimes I do that when I’m not sure I can pull something off, but that’s not the case this time. I’m actually travelling, so it’s hard to make progress on the layout. I did spend some time thinking about how to line up the two ends of the turntable precisely. […]

Wiring the Turntable

Being made out of copper clad, wiring the turntable wasn’t so much a matter of wires as it was of gaps in the copper. I made the gaps with a scriber, rather than bothering with etching. It took more time to figure out where the lines should go than to make the lines themselves. Here […]

Turntable Progress

A little more judicious sanding with the sanding drum in the Dremel tool yielded a freely-turning turntable. Curiously, it turns freely about 30 times and then it seems to bind up again. I may have more sanding to do yet, but I decided to move on to the next step. While I still had the […]

Bonus Tracks! and Turntable Progress too.

Thanks to Andrew, the bonus tracks got glued down this evening. These are two extra staging tracks that may never be required, but I have room, and so I figured we may as well put them in. Perhaps it will be useful to store a few cars there. Andrew glued down the tangent sections, and […]

Wiring the Staging Yard

Andrew came over last Wednesday, and glued down most of the rest of the rail in the staging yard. I followed him with the soldering iron and wire strippers and added feeders to all the rails. Some of the wiring trenches got pretty crowded, but I only had to carve one a little wider to […]

Points First?

In Model Railway Journal 234, Howard Bolton has a super article about building complex trackwork. It would have been great to understand more about what he does, but even in this relatively short article, I picked up a nugget, which I’m going to capture here so I remember it the next time I go to […]

Slave Driver

Andrew and I made great progress on the staging yard on Wednesday evening. This was at least partly due to me mixing up the times, and thinking the clock downstairs hadn’t been changed yet. So, we got an extra hour of time in before quitting for the evening. Andrew, you have permission to tease me […]

What a difference a half-decade makes

The new sound decoder for #10 arrived last week, and I just took it out of the box. Wow, it is a lot smaller than the old decoder! This should be a cinch to fit into the tender, and may enable me to add a little more lead to bring the tender up to NMRA […]