It occurred to me that a blog about a model railroad would seem odd if there were no photos of said model railroad. So here are a couple photos of the progress that the track gang has made over the last few months. A six-track yard (plus passing track) was installed using Shinohara and Atlas switches and Peco track. The yard is code 70, with the passing track and main line code 83. The layout is oriented with the aisle running north-south, so it is divided into the ‘east half’ and ‘west half’ for the time being; someday we’ll get around to assigning proper names to the various tracks and locations. The yard is on the west half with curved north and south yard leads to maximize the track lengths. A spur will be run to the east side to serve about 3-4 industries.
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| The view from the train room door reveals a lot of mess during the yard construction. Fortunately most of it has been cleaned up. The diamond crossovers at right have since been replaced by a pair of Atlas turnouts to connect the main and passing track. |
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| The north lead of the yard after correcting the finicky trackwork. |
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| The south yard lead during construction, before ground throws installed. From rear, we have the main line, passing track, yard tracks 1-6 (closest switch will lead to engine shop), and main line again; it loops around to the right to connect with main line at rear. |
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| View of the yard looking north from the south end during construction. |
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| See: most of the mess was cleaned up! Here I'm mocking up the east industrial spur. The rolling mill will go approximately where the blue box of switches is located in the photo. |
So far we have been successful in running trains on DCC on the layout with few derailments. Most have been attributed to cars with narrow wheelset gauge, or tight trucks leading to rail-climb derailments. The north yard ladder was found to have a couple trouble spots so a # 4 turnout from the passing track to the ladder was replaced with a longer-radius curved turnout. This helped smooth operations by eliminating the derailments caused by the sharp curve and the short transition from the level of the passing track to the yard. Next step will be to add some form of turnout control to the north end since it is not accessible for switching operations (unless access hatch is removed). At this point, both electrical and mechanical turnout controls are being studied but no decision has been made yet as to how we'll proceed. The south end of the yard has been outfitted with Caboose Industries ground throws since it is within reach and this is likely where the majority of the switching will take place.
Thanks for stopping by,
Cheers,
Peter.
images taken from various sources for illustration only Free model train building plans 
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