Turtle Creek sectional layout track pieces

[Anonymous]

Yes, I'm a newbie and this one looks fun, but how many different ways can you put together 60 pieces of track?

I give up, but the turtle creek layout is killing me.

Can somebody show me how they composed the sectional layout for the turtle creek?

Maybe an Atlas RTS file... or a webpage...???

Thanks in Advance

[tstage]

scadaman29325,

Welcome to the forum!

Most of the TC layout is sectional but a few pieces are achieved using what's called flex-track - i.e. track that can be flexed to the desired radius or curve. I'm guess that's where you may be running into the problems.

I'm not sure what software MR uses for their layout pictorals. It's not Atlas RTS, that's for sure.

In answer to your question, "How many different ways can you put together 60 pieces of track?". I'll let a mathmatician answer that one. But, if my memory serves me correctly, I believe it would be a factorial of 60. (In other words, way more than you and I would ever be able to put together in a life time.)

Tom

P.S. scadaman29325, I took a look at the Sectional view on p. 11 of the supplement. The "List of track components" is listed directly underneath. This may help a bit. Whenever you see 3 pieces make a quarter circle, that 18" radium track. (Four pieces would be 22" radius track.)

Acccording to the list, there's only 6 sections of 22" radius track. I'm speculating that 3 of them are on the inner circle track (left side of page) heading towards the crossover - i.e. to the left of the 1" section of track. The other 3 are after the turnout (or switch) going into that track, right off the mainline. Does that make sense? Unless otherwise marked (or the longer curved pieces - that's the flex-track), everything else curved should be 18" radius curves.

12/31/04
UPDATE: I better relook at the section view again. The above may not be right after all.

[challenger3802]

QUOTE: Originally posted by tstage

In answer to your question, "How many different ways can you put together 60 pieces of track?". I'll let a mathmatician answer that one. But, if my memory serves me correctly, I believe it would be a factorial of 60. (In other words, way more than you and I would ever be able to put together in a life time.)

And factorial of 60 comes out at 8.32 (to the power of 81), which is an awful lot of ways to put together 60 bits of track!!

Ian

[tstage]

Thanks, Ian! I love being edumacated!

Tom