Monday, September 12, 2016

New Track Plan

Wow, what a beautiful change in the weather. Todays high was 14C.  My kind of weather. Now maybe I can return to the stratosphere of the barn loft and continue with some model railroad tinkering.

One change that I made over the last few weeks was to upgrade the electrical service coming out to the shop. I needed to install some more circuits around the shop for various tools and was running out of power and breaker space. We now have 200 amp dedicated service to the shop, not split off from the house as it was in the past. Manitoba Hydro had a special deal for customers if you upgraded from 200 to 400 amp service. Basically the increased service power was a minimal cost to me, of course you pay a little extra per month going from 200 to 400 service, but this now gives me oodles of power for my intended uses. And now I can run some more circuits upstairs for lighting etc etc. in the railroad room.  :)

New 400 amp, power distribution centre.
Been going back and forth over track plans and what not. This latest incarnation will incorporate continuous  as well as utilizing a lift out or swing down.

Latest sketch of benchwork footprint.

I guess at some point you have to call it good and start building some benchwork or this thing will never get off the ground. Must have studied a bazillion different track plans and read about all the pros and cons of the myriad layouts. Initially I wanted nothing to do with a lift out or swing away or whatever you want to call them. But because my entry to the room is from outside the layout, as opposed to stairs coming up the middle, the only feasible way to achieve continuous running using the full parameters of the room was to go with a lift out.

Probably 75 percent of the benchwork was cobbled together last season and another day with the woodworking tools should have the benchwork done and braced.

4 comments:

  1. It is definitely starting to cool down... soon it will be time for me to get back to layout work again too.

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    1. I see by your layout that you have a duck under or lift out. How are you coping with that?

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  2. Looking good Glen. How do you like the Intermountain SD40-2's? I am thinking of picking one up to go with the rest of my CEMR fleet.

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  3. Hi Gary..long time no hear.
    Ah yes...the Intermountain SD40-2's... well quite honestly I have not put a lot of track time under the wheels of those two. When I purchased them I initially tried them out to make sure they did run and all lights and sounds worked etc. Long term we'll have to see I suppose.
    From what little research I have done and folks I've talked to about Intermountain, the general consensus is that they are OK as far as runners, perhaps not quite the quality of say a Rapido unit, but right up there.
    I sure hope to get some track time in real soon, now that fall is pretty much here. Just finishing off the benchwork and plywood etc as we speak. For this season I will be lucky if I get the loop to loop tracked and ballasted. We are also concurrently doing some home reno's...so I have to split my time between trains and kitchens. But I'm not trying to rush any aspect of this process.....it's supposed to be fun right?
    Enjoying the ride so far.
    Thanks for stopping by. More posts soon to follow ( I hope). :)

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