Turntable and roundhouse requires handlaid track

Over the last couple of evenings, I’ve put in the ties and timbers for the tracks around the turntable and into the roundhouse. It’s hard to imagine how you would achieve this without handlaying the track. Mercifully, for most of us, it’s all just plain track – no turnouts – and so, relatively straightforward. Handlaying […]

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 […]

Staging point throw bars

Tonight, I finished all the staging point throw bars. This followed the same springing scheme I explored with a proof of concept a couple of weeks ago. As I was finishing the last one, I thought to myself that not only was I in danger of almost knowing what I was doing, but that perhaps […]

The Screaming Banshee Rail Grinder

Today the boy and I set up the Screaming Banshee Rail Grinder (SBRG) and in relatively short order, ground all the frogs and points for the staging yard. I thought I had described this machine previously, but I can’t seem to find it, so here we go again. It’s just as well really, because some […]

Filing the gauge side

I suppose if you have to reinvent something, it’s time to write it down so you don’t have to invent it yet again later. Tonight, I had hoped to get the Screaming Banshee Rail Grinder out, but I only got as far as filing the gauge side of the frogs and points before the noise […]

Staging Yard Ties

I’ve been spending most of my recent train time trying to get the turnout controls to print. The good news is that it looks like they’re going to be sufficiently robust. The bad news is the original design had a lot of overhang, and would come off the 3D printer bed at the least provocation. […]

Staging Yard Points

As you recall, the staging yard is on a wide window sill, and that means there is no room for Bullfrog or other switch machines below the roadbed. Because the room provides a number of functions in our house, we want to be able to make the staging yard look like a clean window sill, […]

North switch machine

Andrew came over last night, and together we had a productive evening, installing the switch machine for the north switch and laying out the staging yard. But that’s another blog post. FastTracks expedited a spring to finish the last Bullfrog, and so, we were away to the races. Thank-you FastTracks, I was delighted by your […]