building lift-outs

[bjshelbe]

Hi All, am new to this chat thing. My husband & I have an L shape layout about 22' x 25'. We just added a little extention on the side & need to know how to lay the track so you can easily lift it in and out. I have never seen an article on it.
Thanks.
Judy

[der5997]

Judy: Welcome to the hobby. First of all, what scale is your layout? (This mayhelp folks with the engineering of their replies as the smaller the scale, the less forgiving the gaps in the rails at the lift out joins tend to be)
Secondly, in general, try to avoid lift outs that are curved, since holding the ends of the gapped rails in guage on a curve is more of a challenge.
Thirdly, there has to be some way to get electrical power to the lift out section once it's in place. In HO the usual way to do this is to have the rail ties cut away on each side of each gap and to slide a rail joiner onto the gapped rail once the lift out is in place. A possible disadvantage with this is in a situation where the liftout may have to be revomed in a hurry, as in a doorway. (My situation, as it happens.) A quick release plug for the wiring at each end of the liftout is the solution I've followed for that. I'm in N scale, and I don't use joiners at the gaps. I got that tip from an HO modular layout at a train show in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
Alignment of the liftout is important, you don't want the thing sloppy, or the rails will wander out of alignment, even with rail joiners (in any scale below O is my guess). Solutions that come to mind are a dovetail kind of joint in the benchwork for the liftout, and small latches that snug the section into place. In any case the liftout has to be supported at the joins, usually by a small shelf on which the end sits.
(In my case the lift out is a roll away module because of the doorway, and the alignment is made on the layouts electrical power plugs mounted on the door frame.)
Hope this helps.

[bjshelbe]

Thanks for the info. By the by, we do HO.
Judy

[Anonymous]

This subject is also of interest to me as I am thinking about a section that will swing up on a piano hinge to access my layout which is N scale and oval shaped. I was thinking of using a 45 degree angle cut on the side opposite the hinge with a locking catch to tighten things up once it is in the down position.
Are there any hints about how this is done on other layouts or pictures / articles that would be helpful ?
How about wiring it with DCC ? Do you need to use jumpers or can you just wire it as if it is an insulated block

[der5997]

TVRR: A swing up has its own peculiar oddities. These have to do with the rails catching on each other unless the hinge(s) are vertically off set, or the gap between the rails is uncomfortably large. Try drawing it out on a piece of paper to see what I mean. In other words, you may have to put a piece of hinge on either side of the track, and raised a bit from the sub-roadbed. A way around this may be to let the swing be a swing down, but the end far from the hinge then has to be rigged so that the rails don't interfere with one another. Your 45 degree cut works fine for an upswing, and the latches should hold everything in place. At least that's [2c]

[CP5170]

TVR: I had a swing down section on my HO layout but found that the hinge was not rigid enough and the section would sift causing derailaments. I changed to a lift-out section. I made my from 4 pieces of 1/2" plywood cut 3" deep ( or wide). I glued the pieces together then cut a 3/4" x2" section out of each end. I placed a 3/4" board with a short piece of dowel extending up. I drilled a corresponding hole in the lift-out. The lift-out sits snuggly on the dowels and can be easily removed.

For DCC wiring, I treated the lift-out as a separate block. The wires plug in at one end.

Hope this helps...Ken

[Anonymous]

A common trick here is to take the last sleeper of the track ends at the joint and replace them with PCB (printed circuit board) sleepers that are electrically gapped and screwed onto the wood frame of the modules. The ends of teh rails are then soldered to the PCB so they cannot move out of allignment with each other.

You still need to hold the boards straight and pass power but that is not too hard.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the ideas, I can understand how the height location of the hinges will affect the way the gate will interact with the track that is stationary. I am thinking that with a quality hinge that has no play in it and the right design this is a feasable option. I am also thinking that crawling under to get in sounds like a lot less work.
It is just not my nature to crawl when I can craft.
Is it worth it or not ?
What do you say?

Thanks
Vince

[der5997]

Is the satisfaction gained from getting it to work, AND not having to crawl, AND being able to invite visitors over worth it [?] Only you can answer that, but for me..[:D][bow][tup][tup][yeah]