Good Morning. 29°, and sunny. going to 50 °. Maybe the last of the snow cover on the front yard will go away.
Montanan: Two layouts ago, I managed to alter some Atlas Custom Line #6 switches to build a "hump" yard with close - 1¾" - track centers. The top (divide) switch was an Atlas wye which corresponds to a #3 frog. It worked quite well and I managed to get quite a lot into a eight foot space. That was with code 83 rail.
The current layout was based on one of John Armstrong's plans for Kalmbach, which I modified to make it work. Many of those old plans did not work as drawn. I managed to squeeze in a reverse loop, and an industrial area, using Shinohara and PECO curved switches, as well as Atlas wye and #4 custom line. Main Line switches were all Stlas #6. I built the 2'x12' using code 70 Micro Engineering switches, basing the plan on on an actual location on the Reading Railroad. It worked out fairly well, well enough to want to keep the new portion, while disposing the old style train board island.
Sounds like an interesting plan. I have learned that a drawn plan usually needs a bit of tweaking to make it work. I prefer to lay the actual turnouts and flex track down on the area that it is going. I also learned the hard way that if there are going to be structures, that things will probably work out better to have them built so you know the actual footprint it will take up on the layout.
I don't want to sound like a snob, but I won't use anything but flex track. Back in the 70's when an N scale layout was all I had room for being stuck in an apartment I was trying to get a layout started and it got a bit frustrating trying to get things to fir using sectional track. I didn't know that flex track existed because I had been out of the hobby while in the service. The folks at the hobby shop turned me onto it and I never looked back. Not being confined to use set radius curved track and set lengths of straight sectional really made a big difference.
When I started my current layout hand laying track and turnouts made everything so much easier to fit in a given space by building what you needed instead of settling on what track was available. Even building the last part of my layout having to use factory turnouts was still a lot easier with the use of flex track. Due to space limitations, I had to settle on a 32 inch minimum radius, but many of the curves are broader. I love the broad sweeping curves Ken has on his D&J layout. In industrial areas I did put some pretty tight curves in so tracks could serve industries without taking up too much real estate. This worked out fine for me as the layout was built for switching and for the most part, smaller diesels and steam locomotives are the majority of the power I have. Again, I never has a track plan drawn out, but I did have a plan on what I wanted for a railroad and it ended up working out better than I expected.
Guess you won't get much done with vacation coming up, but keep us posted on what's going on.
