The track is all in and even PAINTED. One of the great things about battery power is that the loco never stalls or jerks and YOU DON"T HAVE TO EVER CLEAN THE TRACK.
The first shot is of Arcadia now that all the track is in and the next three are of Punta Gorda with the barge unloading dock in the foreground and the car ferry to the rear.
These shots are overviews of the entire room showing all the trackwork and the beautiful painted rails.
I relocated all the equipment using the locomotive and the operation was flawless, no stalls. no jerks, and more importantly no derailments!! What a pleasure it was and also very satisfying:)
Alas it is time to pack the tools, vacuum the rug and depart for Spring in Maryland. See you in November we we start anew with the structures and the equipment.
I pride myself on my organization and planning. So when I started to enlarge the track plan to begin track laying in Arcadia I discovered a problem. THE DESIGN ASSUMED AN 10' peninsula and only the 8' ONE I BUILT WOULD FIT THE SPACE!!! Uh oh...... What a dufus!
Off to the design software. I'm now on the 5th or 6th redesign of the yard. The battery cars attached to the locomotives take up some room on the tail tracks so their length all had to be double and triple checked, i.e. revised, to be sure cars could be switched and run around moves could be accomplished. Originally the yard had a very linear design and now the the space required a compound track arrangement as shown in the photos. Now on to Punta Gorda that also had to be redesigned many times a also it occupies the now too short space.
After one false start that had to be removed, the wye is done. I mistakenly placed the two wye turnouts that are near the palms too close together resulting in sub-optimal radii on the yard approach end of the wye out the bottom pic to the lower left. All is well now and work has continued on Arcadia yard itself.
