Finally making some progress

[rrinker]

Since a lot of what I'm doing on my new layout is completely new to me, I decided to pick up a spare piece of extruded foam to use as a 'practice' piece before starting to cut and glue things to the completed benchwork pieces. That way, if I mess up, it's no big deal. So I cut the foam in half, since a 2x4' sections is a lot easier to work with. I laid out a simple straight through line with a single turnout to a siding. Obviously not very big, but operable with a loco and a couple of cars. Not a big concern, the main reason for doing this was tracklaying and scenery practice, not running trains.
I used a Dremel Multipurpose Cutter attachment to carve a hole to mount a Tortoise switch machine from the top as seen here (my source fot his idea): http://www.pbase.com/tracktime/norcalf

Note: I need a better way of cutting the through hole part of this. The Dremel cuts out the 1/16" inset just fine, but a knife is not the ideal tool to cut the rest of the wya through the foam

The Tortoise and board dropped right in, no problem. I feel confident this method will work on the actual layout.
Next I put down a beadof Elmer's glue and put down the straight segment of Woodland Scenics Track Bed. Very easy to work with. I used a bunch of pushpins to hold it down while the glue dried.
Next I cut a piece of the Track bed for the diverging route and glued that in place. Then I attached sets of my homemade terminal joiners to each leg of the turnout (Atlas Code 83 #6). Yes, for this short segment this is overkill, but I wanted to do things the same way I intend to on the actual layout. I drilled holes throught he foam at the joint locations to feed the wires through. Foam is nice - by 'drilling' holes I mean I took a drill bit in my hand and turned it through the foam. I also drilled a hole where the rivet is on the frog for soldering a feeder wire there. I intend to power all my Atlas frogs thruogh the Tortoise contacts, so no exceptions on this test segment.

Note: I will need to paint the portion of the wire that shows at the top before ballasting, the red and white wire stands out to much. I used red and white for the feeders bcause that's the color the #20 spools of wire came in, plus it matches the colors of the #12 wire I bougth to be my main feeders. Why not Red and Black? Because in the darkness under the layout, red and black will look very much alike.

Next I cut a piece of Atlas code 83 flex track to length for the point side of the turnout. The Xuron rail cutter is a GREAT tool. The 'keep' end of the cut is VERY smooth and joiners slide right on, no big burr to file off. The other side of the cut, well... it could be salvaged easily, if you need BOTH sides. But all I will do with that end is put some sort of bumper or track stop there so I don't shove cars off the edge of the board. I spread Elmer's glue over the roadbed and put this piece of track in place, and held it down with more pushpins. That's where I'm at right now, waiting for the glue to dry. Tomorrow hopefully I will put down the straight side of the turnout and figure out a good way to ramp down from the HO roadbed height to th N scale roadbed height I am using for sidings. Right now I am figuring on a combination of sanding down the HO roadbed, and shimming up the N scale roadbed. I set up a couple of pieces of flex track side by side, one on HO roadbed and one on N scale roadbed, and set a couple of cars on it, and it looks GREAT, gives the effect of the siding being lower without sitting right on the foam surface. N scale cork is just wide enough if you leave it attached in the middle to fit under the ties of HO flex track.

--Randy

[Anonymous]

Sounds like you are making great progress. Keep it up.
Reed