It took eight years, but I can finally breathe a sigh of relief as I am done with track laying on the Aquia Line. This evening I installed the last turnout including the switch stand. It all works well. It seems to be one of the smoothest turnouts yet. I still have some spikes to install, but for now we can declare victory on the track work.I also finished adding the tracks to the sidings at Burnside's Wharf. I made a new jig using my laser to help spike the straight sections. That worked much better than I expected.
It's too bad I am done with track work as I was just starting to get the hang of hand laying. In total there are 23 turnouts, about 140 feet of mainline, about 210 total linear feet of track, 6000 ties, and 24,000 spikes.
 |
| Clear acrylic straight track spiking fixture. |
Next is wiring and electrical gap cutting. I need to add an autoreverse on one leg of the wye. I also plan to add frog juicers to the turnouts. Most of my engines have either batteries or keep alive circuits, but I do have one engine that is just DCC with sound. That one would definitely benefit from Frog Juicers, which are easy to install. The Frog Juicers will keep the other engines running well too.
Congratulations Bernie !
ReplyDeleteI've been building my turnouts in N scale and have also found my skills in that area improve the more I do. I've got 3 reverse loops in the layout and have had real good results from the PSX-AR so can recommend them.
Congrats. That'd a big accomplishment.
ReplyDeleteIf you start to miss it, maybe you could hire yourself out to those daunted by trackwork. :)
ReplyDeleteBut well done on completing a major project.