Silcon Valley Free-MoN: A new yard has begun

Drinks on the roof....

 

Installed tortoises and one bullfrog on the east end entrance (the commercial / industrial section) and wired up everything.

early on, the wires are a rat’s nest


Then, things look neater. Using the blue tape method of keeping wires down, for now. Will finalize once everything gets built and fully tested.



Then, tested rail continuity and power, so ....

 

I took a couple weeks off from the module, partially due to waiting for rail joiners to arrive, then the grand-dog came for Thanksgiving (while daughter and her boyfriend visited his family—they are now in self quarantine), and then I had a lot of decoder installs to get through. Finally got back to it today.

first off, finished the last 4 legs of the yard ladder (all of 6 inches each, but hey, if you don’t have rail joiners available....)



Then, started on the body of the yard, working on the straight section. Got the crossovers installed and all twelve parallel tracks glued down



Tomorrow I will solder he tracks to the end plate PCB ties and we will see just how well everything matches!

 

Well, when I said that, I really hoped it would be true. I did get all the tracks soldered, and in the “prime” directions, all 12 tracks matched perfectly. But, when the new section was rotated...



One track width off, only on the 4 “roadbed” tracks, which basically meant my alignment was off center by about 1/32”. But, that won’t work in N scale. It was a slow and careful process to get the tracks moved, and now there is perfect alignment of them (and I can now use the 3 finished sections as my templates for final soldering alignment of the tracks on the two curved sections)

I then wired up the section and installed the tortoises and NCE SwitchIt. Feeder wires being run through the ties and foam



And the underside.


The real fun was debugging the crossovers. No problem using my FP40H, ran through them (all directions) without a care. But a 2-10-2, LOL! Three of the four switches were fine, but took me a few s weekend to finally find what the problem was on the fourth. Now runs fine.

So, today, started on the curves.



All 12 tracks for this section have been laid and glued. Second curve will get track tomorrow, and goal is to get all 6 section’s of track wired by the weekend.

 

When I glued the wood ties under them, I somehow distorted one of the point rails so that it was out of gauge. Once I figured out where the problem was, and what caused it, was easy to fix (just broke the ties loose from the rail, and it sprang back into gauge). Not sure exactly how it happened, but that is why I test all switches with:

1. A manually pushed 40’ box car
2. A manually pushed passenger car (Kato)
3. A 4-axle diesel
4. A 2-10-2 or a 4-8-4 steam
5. A 6-axle diesel
6. Articulated steam

1-3 usually work all the time, unless something wrong with points or frog
4-6 always show all the flaws in hand laid switches

Normally, the problems tend to be in the flange ways (tight guard rails, frog point mispositioned), which I try to catch early. I haven’t had a rail out of gauge as bad as this one was in a very long time .

 

All track is now laid and aligned for section reversibility. Approx 7.5 scale miles of track(210 ft of flex track and 35 hand laid switches). So, in honor of this significant milestone, I set up all six sections, probably the only time these will all be set up together at the house (they actually stick out of the garage just a bit)



Higher angle to see far end



And to celebrate the occasion, my brand new 13 car Kato Twentieth Century Limited

 

Looks incredible! One of my most picky track debugger locomotives is the Kato PA-1 & a close second by the SD90MAC.
If those run reliably, your track is good to go! ...but it sure is frustrating in the process to reach that point...

 

Yep, PA-1s are my first choice of 6 axles for testing

 

It has been a month since I posted! Wow. I got busy doing decoder installations over the holidays, and the module sections sat quietly. Finally got back to them the end of last week, and finished up the track wiring. Then spent a couple days working on switches and track which I had noted as needing some work, all of which was basically unworthy of photos, but needed to get done before continuing.

Last couple days, started working on the switch controls. Tortoises were installed on the industrial/commercial section at the east end of the module, since the buildings and other scenery would not lend itself to having folks reaching over and down to the track. I got the SwitchIts installed, and today finished installing and wiring the push buttons to operate. There are matching buttons on each side of the section, and crossovers have a single control to keep both switches synchronized.

NCE SwitchIts mounted and hooked up to Tortoises




A couple of the push buttons on the fascia


The buttons, showing the gory detail

 

Since cold and raw out in the garage today, I decided to get a start on what I know will be a very tedious chore: wiring up close to 100 bi-color 0603 LEDs for the signals on the yard. Here are the first 20 Red/Green completed (3 wires each; common anode)



These will go into my custom designed and 3D printed dwarf signals, shown below. Most will be Red / Green for trailing point entry toma switch, while facing points will be Amber / Green

 

Thanks. Just the housing, or a fully wired up light?

I hadn’t planned to sell these (will probably post the STL files into the Resources section) but can consider once I complete this project. And, when I get all the lights installed, one can always ask here if I have any leftovers