Construction of a Dead Rail On30 Module

My fellow Dead Rail Society members (especially Justin) have been after me to build an On30 module.  The main requirement for the module is that it not have any track power - all the locomotives run on it will be battery powered.

Here is the track plan I chose.  the dimensions of the module were dictated by the size of my SUV with one of the seats folded down. That gave me 4 feet by 6.5 feet with a cutout to go around the seat left up.  This way I can transport 3 people.  I also wanted a module that I could operate in stand-alone mode.

The module consists of 2 towns, Sausalito and Duncan's Mills, roughly, following the North Pacific Coast as a prototype (to make it prototype based to keep Tony happy). All of the turnouts face in one direction so there is never any need for a runaround move. This saves a lot of turnouts and track.  The turnouts leading to Cazadero and San Anselmo are for connections to other modules.  San Anselmo doubles as a siding for an interchange in stand-alone operations.  Cazadero faces the wrong way and the siding is just a little too short for a car in any case.

Sausalito has a 2-track ferry that can hold 6 cars.  This acts as an off layout destination and as a fiddle yard for adding removing cars if desired.  The ferry won't actually leave.  It will stay docked.  The first track is the arrival/departure track.  Trains arrive and leave from here.  When making up a train to Duncan's Mills it will be assembled on this track.  The next track is a yard track for car storage. The back track consists of 3 industry spots.

Duncan's Mills has 3 tracks.  The challenge here is that the lead only has room for one car plus the locomotive. To switch it, the train is left on the arrival/departure track and shuffled one at a time in to the Duncan's Mills. Cars for the departing train have to be switched out one at a time. This will mean thinking ahead in order to get these cars positioned to be removed and not blocked by the arriving cars.

I am going to be using colored tabs for directing operations. This is a scheme used by John Allen on his famous Gorre and Daphetid and taught to me by Don Mitchell, a former G&D operator. I regularly operate on Don's Southern Mountain layout using tabs and have become impressed by the flexibility of the method and the endlessly varying patterns it produces. I think the latter feature will be important in keeping the operations on a small layout like this interesting. I will have more on using tabs in future posts.

Traveling Layout for Tam Valley Depot

I decided it would be nice to have a traveling layout to demo TVD products.  Ideally this would be small enough to fit on a standard show table of 6 feet and be light and portable.  I came across an interesting track plan on the late Carl Arendt's fantastic Micro Layout site (an irreverent aside - most of these layouts are not one-thousandth of a full-size, garage, attic or basement,  sized layout as the name micro implies), the Jack Trollope's Standard Gauge Micro TymeSaver.  The plan is for HO and I modified it for On30 by making it slightly longer and increasing the spacing between tracks to 3".  Here is my plan:

I also liked this plan because it featured 3 different turnouts, a standard turnout, a 3-way stub great for demoing the Dual 3-Way, and a double slip which is mysterious to many people but actually quite easy to set up the controls for.

I built the layout out of gatorfoam - one of my favorite construction materials.  It easy to cut with a utility knife and to stick together with glue and coarse drywall screws.

The turnouts were made by Cream City by Glen who uses Fast Track jigs.  The rest of the track is Micro-engineering code 83 flex track.

The clever part was that I added plexiglas windows to view the electronics normally hidden underneath.  After all this is what I sell at Tam Valley Depot so hiding it is not what I want to do. I even installed some LED lighting so the boards would be more visible.

The micro-layout folded and ready for travel.

Windows underneath let people see the electronics usually hidden underneath.

To the left of the stub switch is a clear plastic window with a Hex Frog Juicer in it.  As the trains roll over the frogs of the stub, they trip the Frog Juicer and viewers can watch the switching.

 I have been having a lot of fun with the layout.  I took it the Springfield show in Massachusetts last January. It really didn't work out as I hoped as a demo layout because it needs to be turned over to show people the electronics properly.  Long term I think it will turn in to a module and I will finish the scenery on it and get rid of the windows.

This is a repost of an earlier blog to test out Blogger...
Hooray!  I finally started construction on the new Donner Summit layout!  To the left you can see the surveying crew busy at work figuring out where to place the next beam.

Blog entries have been slow lately due to the delay of painting and restoring the layout shed.  I replaced a lot of dry rotted wood, added new flashing, fixed a number of leaks in the roof, cleaned and painted the exterior.  I also snuck a business ttrip to Europe in there.  Still planned is a deck in front of the building for people to lounge on and to put my table-saw and planer on during construction projects.

I have started building the staging basement level.  I need to finish it to the stage of operating track-work as it will be hard to get to once the next level is put on due to low clearance.  I have bought all the switches (Atlas #6 for economy) and flex-track (Atlas Code 100) and should be laying it next week.  After that I will build the helix and start the lower level.  Keep you posted!  Hopefully it won't be so long until my next post.

The newly restored and painted workshop metal shed - site of the new layout.