Daily Archives: December 23, 2018

Layout progress report: 12/23/18

Made some great progress this past week. The area around Chevy Chase is taking shape. I laid track halfway through the area and finished fitting the rest of the main and passing siding. I ran out of time to complete laying it. Still need to solder the drops to the rail bottoms and spike into place. After that I will install the team track which will go on the curvy bit of roadbed I installed.

I also installed a new-to-me Digitrax system that was graciously given to me. It’s an Empire Builder 2, about 15 years old but nearly new. Unfortunately the DT300 throttle suffers from the capacitor plague and I will have to have it repaired by Digitrax. Since they were badly hit by hurricane Michael it will not be for a few months. No worries for now, I have an old UT1 to play with. 🙂

Did some cleaning up and consolidating of scenery materials and storage in the layout room and a few other layout tasks. It’s been a productive week! More soon.

Friday view of work completed, showing the roadbed for the T.W. Perry siding (to the right) and the mainline and passing siding (to the Left) laid down as well. Ignore the jumper cables; they were just there to test the track as I hasn’t soldered the feeder wires yet.)
Sunday evening update. The track is laid in for the second half (West end) of the Chevy Chase section. This “boxcar-eye-view” of the track is looking geographic West, with the T.W. Perry siding on the right and the passing siding branching off of the main to the left.
An overview pic from Sunday evening showing the progress. The curved roadbed coming off of the passing siding is the team track. This track is slightly sunken as the prototype was.