Exploring the World of Model Railroading
Continuing on with the work in the staging, it would appear as if the crews are working around the clock (hope the union doesn’t catch wind of that). Those straight sections I mentioned in the part 3, well they are done, and more. The entire West ladder is complete, including the re-railers.
Oh boy, I really feel I’m on the roll. Either that, or the desire to get the straight sections of the yard over and done with. Did I mention boring, tedious and repetitive?
Work continues in the staging with the MoW crew busy test-fitting the West ladder of the main yard. Turnouts are so much more fun as things can always go wrong. Straight track is just that – straight, but for turnouts you need to drill holes for the motor, feeders, etc.
I’m really not sure why it took me this long to start laying track down in the yard. I suppose I had my doubts about whether the main staging yard should remain split in half, with a double ladder in the middle, or have one long yard and park trains one after the other. After that was put to rest (and I opted for a single long yard), I gathered my tools and started on a bit of this and a bit of that.
A bit more work was done today on the staging yard. The North side of the double-ended main staging yard has been laid down, feeders and all.
After getting some feedback on the forums, I had to decide how to correct issues that have been plaguing the layout from the start. As the layout shape is an E and there’s only one helix, the lower right corner next to the door there becomes a dead-end for all 3 decks. Ideally, if there was another helix at the end of the other arm of the E, this would not be an issue, but I did not want to put a helix around the column, so…
I’ve been struggling to figure out what to do about getting to and from upper levels. That is why the section in the upper left corner of the plan (that nobody ever sees in the photos) is still undeveloped. Originally in my N Scale plan there was supposed to be a helix there, but now with H0 that helix is a bit bigger and that tipped off the scale for me, even though N scale helix was almost as big, square footage wise.
The helix for H0 is going to be a really modest one, barely adequate by any standard. A 24″ inner loop and 26.5″ outer, with an average grade of 2.3%. I wish that grade was 2% or less but there’s just no room to make it an oval or make it a bigger circle without sacrificing aisle and benchwork space. I might see if there’s some room for a triangle but knowing that I need a 24″ turn curve that might be out of question.
Another option is a gradual around the wall climb, a no-lix. Problem with that is I would either have to give up the walk-in aspect of the layout and put a swing gate at the entrance, or make trains turn back and go through the same scenery twice, on a different track. Either methods use more precious benchwork space all around the layout, unlike the helix which hogs the corner with its 20 sq. ft.