MikeOwnby
Active Member
New Guy, one thing you might think of is whether there is ANY possibility in the future that you might want to separate your layout into smaller blocks. For signaling, for power management, for whatever. I drop power at every flex track junction and on all diverging sides of turnouts simply for that reason. I'm not currently planning on ever having any block detection-based signaling, BUT I don't know where my head and motivation are going to be five or six years from now. SO, since I basically have power running to nearly every rail join on the layout, if I ever want to cut some gaps and create blocks for signal operation, crossing gates, whatever...I can do so very easily without having to do more than slightly modify the wiring under the table. No new power drops or having to mess around in track, ballast and scenery that's already in place.
For my current trackwork and the few power districts I currently have set up, it's overkill. Definitely. It adds a *little* work and expense to the track laying, but in the end really not much at all when you look at the big picture of the layout. A little future-proof insurance that may never be needed, but I'll likely thank myself for if I ever do need it. And of course, as others have stated, it does also future-proof any rail joins that might wriggle loose in the future too.
For my current trackwork and the few power districts I currently have set up, it's overkill. Definitely. It adds a *little* work and expense to the track laying, but in the end really not much at all when you look at the big picture of the layout. A little future-proof insurance that may never be needed, but I'll likely thank myself for if I ever do need it. And of course, as others have stated, it does also future-proof any rail joins that might wriggle loose in the future too.