Tortoise's - "Fit & forget"?

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by rrinker

Well, all I'd have to replace would be some ballast around the turnout if I needed to lift one out.

So, you are really betting that it'll never need to come out!..... I think I agree with you - It seems to me that once these suckers are in and working properly *mechanical* movement shouldn't be required [As I said, cables are not an issue].

I guess I was looking for comments along the lines of "Put mine in 'n' years ago, never thought about 'em since!" to confirm my feelings :-)

Thx,
Ian

[rrinker]

Well, all I'd have to replace would be some ballast around the turnout if I needed to lift one out. Or if I wanted to get myself good and frustrated, I probably could actually use a long screwdriver and unscrew the tortoise from below in the usual way - the Tortoises get screwed to my little squares of perfboard, they are not glued on or otherwise fastened in a permanent manner.
The ones in front, in the yard, would have long be damaged from ducking under that section had they been hanging below the foam surface. And in future stages where I will have hidden staging underneath the top level, mounting the Tortoises through the foam means they don't stick down below the supporting benchwork - that allows me to keepe the grade down to staging lower and shorter, while still having plenty of room to reach in in case of derailments. I'm still not sure about the turnouts in the staging yard itself. Again they wouldn't stick below the benchwork, but I plan to (ok, HAVE to) use the under-layout space for storage, and while they don;t hang below the benchwork itself, they do protrude from the foam. Mounting them upside-down on top of the staging level is an interesting idea, but would create many obstacles to work around when trying to rescue derailed equipment under there.

--Randy

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Randy in particular has what look to me like 'buried' tortoii. The few other installs I've looked at (in foam btw) seem to be in places where substantial 'damage' could be done to the landscape if servicing were necessary.......

I'm kind of hoping the consensus is "fit 'em and forget 'em" for that reason - I *could* make them accessible, but it would involve a lot of extra styrene work. BTW, I can get at the connectors, it's just if it ever needed to come off its base track would need to be lifted, which I reckon would suck.

Obviously, this assumes that the sucker is installed 'nicely' and that the operator is satisfied that all is well with operation ;-) - This hobby is truly amazing at revealing flaws that I thought I could 'get away with' - They *always* come back to haunt you!

Comments appreciated,
Cheers,
Ian