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[quote]Originally posted by bryan9664 The shed has a window and if I leave it open rain can't get in but cooler air can. Does that make a difference? [/quote You bet! The sun on the shed walls will turn the inside into an oven if there is no ventilation. Any ventilation will work wonders, but you might want to cut another window on the opposite wall for a cross breeze. (Be able to close or cover the window openings to retain heat in the winter). Maybe a small, cheap exhaust fan too - in a small volume, it doesn't take a whole lot of airflow to keep things cooler. Also if you paint the outside walls of the shed white, much of the sun heat will be reflected. And styrofoam insulation on the inside of the roof and walls will really help both summer and winter. You are going where few have dared to go before. This is one of the things that can make this hobby so exciting - inventing new techniques to solve the practical problems that plague us. Just remember to gap your rails often with UNsoldered rail joiners (use additional power feeds to the tracks between unsoldered joints so electric flow is not dependent on the rail joiners). If you lay track in the hot weather, no problem - come winter you will see how much rail contraction there is and how big the gaps can get. It would help others if you kept records - rail gap vs temperature. Then anyone in future trying this will know how much gap to leave per foot of track if laying it in cooler weather. As a prelayout experiment try installing a section of gapped track on a piece of wood. Make it in the sun on a hot day with the rail ends touching, or heated in your kitchen oven set to 120F (use an oven thermometer). Tighten the free rail ends down with screws so they can't shift. Then stick it in your fridge or deep freeze (with a thermometer) overnight and measure the resulting gap. Tests like this can help you anticipate what the rail contraction in the cold will be for various temperatures and how often the sliding gaps need to be placed to keep each gap small. It might be wise (and i'm only guessing) to use a flexible track with BOTH rails free to slide across the ties. Sectional track with rails fixed to the plastic could have problems with metal and plastic thermal expansion coefficients being very different, causing warping or buckling with drastic temperature changes. If both rails are free to slide they will seek their own temperature related size without pulling the plastic into wierd shapes. This is another experiment you could try in the sun/oven then the deep freeze. You may run into other problems as well that you will need to solve. Again, you are getting into unknown territory. But what you learn from this will be very useful to others that will follow in your footsteps. Keep detailed notes and eventually you will be an expert on this. Remember that the prototype railroading pioneers long ago had all these same problems to solve as well, yet we have railroads that work. Oh, and don't forget mice and termites. Some termite poison and mousetraps could be useful. Good luck on this, and keep us posted on your developments.
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