beside a lot of work done in the garden i managed to continue work on my layout. both loops are done. trackbed glued in place, superelevation added. i use simple styrene strips ranging of 0.5, 0.75 and 1mm thickness. glued onto the woodlands trackbed before laying track. i also spent quite some time installing a bouldercreek defect detector. these devices use to infraret sensors counting the axles of the train, measuring speed. installation in n-scale is a bit tricky since the sensors must be mounted low enough to "see" through between track and the bottom of the cars. no thing with boxcars. but with low riding stack cars there's not much space left. my alan curtis stack cars have a clearance of approx 1.5mm . in the same time the sensors must be mounted high enough to reliably "see" over the rail tops. took a bit of fiddling but now the detector works perfect. just needed some programming to specify a custom message.
coolest thing : there are two different messages depending on the direction of travel ! trains are either going north or south.
last but not least i installed almost 120ft of track. the 1% grade mainline is done up to the point where the two mainlines join again.
performing several test-runs with a 50-car train showed no issues. will try a longer train soon.
this week i will lay track on the 2% grade. north of where the two mains join i will add a spur track between the mains for helper sets. that's the best spot to connect/disconnect helper units for trains coming uphill or going downhill. helpers for downhill ? sure. every now and then a train needs some additional braking power.
weekly work report..........04/15/2018
Posted - 04/16/2018 : 07:45:41
