Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Track continues through Wye










Track laying continues. The top photo is of the Wye area on the outside end of the room. The upper leg of the wye is installed and the tracks to the rear of it are the staging tracks. I decided to add a couple of stub end tracks to hold either my container train or the soybean oil tank car train. The wye will be the entrance to the main yard in Arcadia. The wye track will be completed when the center peninsula is constructed. Before the peninsula is attached the staging area will be sceniced. 
The photos follow the main and go clockwise around the layout thru Mulberry to the Nichols Phosphate Mine area. 
The next two photos show two future projects. I am about start on the battery power conversion for the locos. The AirWire system I've chosen is DCC based technology and requires the receivers be installed in the loco just like a DCC decoder. The receiver has all the functionality of the DCC decoder in addition to the signal receiving capacity. I'm planning on three powered locos to start. Batteries will be placed in the "slave" units. I have removed the motors from old locos purchased on Ebay for little money and will add the batteries inside the shells. I thought the slave idea was prototypical as the ACC used them extensively.
I purchased a lot of 30 cars on Ebay and this photo shows the ones that need some work. Most need couplers, a few need trucks, and several are either undecorated entirely or data only. Not sure when I will get to these but the ones that just need couplers will be first. I'm thinking I will do a "car project" and weather everything as I repair each car. You can see all the serviceable cars are already on the layout.
The final photo is of the workbench area, already way too full with stuff:)

No comments: