I hear UniTrack is bullet-proof and would therefore seem to bed the thing to use for a hidden staging yard. Mine however, will need to be a loop. Is this possible with available curve radiuses? About 15” would need to be the minimum radius with an average train length about 30 cars. A maximum radius would have to be in the 20” area. With UniTrack switches and track, can I get 5 tracks within those parameters? Do UniTrack switches have their own switch motors within the roadbed? Anyone done this?
There's a link in this thread that will help with UniTrack curves... http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?t=119428
Unitrack switches have the mechanism (a solenoid) concealed inside the roadbed. It uses 2 wires, with the polarity determining which direction the switch is thrown. You can control them in one of 4 ways - manually by pushing a little plastic tab in the roadbed, using Kato's blue switchbox, which have the matching socket to the plug on the end of the switch leads, using your own 12V DC momentary switch (make sure it's a momentary switch, and make sure it can handle the peak amp requirements), or using a DCC accessory controller such as the Digitrax DS64 stationary decoder box (supports 4 switches and several options) or Digitrax DS51K1 (a Z scale sized accessory decoder that can be hidden inside the switch - can't be used with the double crossover because it can only handle the amps from one solenoid, not 4).
