Saturday, December 17, 2011

On18 Re-Think

I was talking to my friend Gary Wise last night, pointing out what I was thinking about doing to the On18 track. We started tossing out ideas and this pretty much came up.

1. This is a fiddle yard. I think I can come up with a way for it to fold out of the way when not in use. Just the height from the track-level of the On30 to the top of the upper fascia is about 28″. That would add quite a bit of operational possibility to the On18 portion.
2. A Sector Plate at this location would switch between at minimum, two fiddle yard leads
3. A Peco E492 right-hand HOn30 switch.
4. Siding. This is important for the operation. The critter will pull up on the main and stop with the coal cars between the two switches. This means that they have to fit within the 20″ approximate space but this is plenty for the small On18 coal cars. I could probably fit 5 cars in the space and that would be plenty coming from the mine at one time. After cutting the coal cars loose, the engine then runs around the cars and comes up behind them to push them.
5. A Peco E491 left-hand HOn30 switch.
6. A Peco E492 right-hand HOn30 switch.
7. A Peco E492 right-hand HOn30 switch.
8. Stub yard. The engine will park the loaded cars in this yard and the push one at a time to the right of the layout to the coal bin. Empty cars will also be brought back and stored here. Right now there is not enough room to put the 5 coal cars on one lead .. but this is the first design. Not having enough room can be a ‘good thing’ since possibly adding an additional siding nearby would allow for a switching puzzle.
9. This is as far as the On18 extends currently.
10. The dashed lines represents the track that will extend over the coal bin.

5 comments:

  1. I like the idea Ed. It should give you a chance for a little more operation.

    Since I am new to On30, I'm curious to know your thoughts on your track choice... Why Peco? Why not Micro Engineering On30 products or hand laying?

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  2. You have to understand that this is really my fist model railroad since forever. I laid a few feet of track on a layout back around 1981 .. so it had been .. ummm .. 29 years. I had joined a modular group which got me back into it .. and Peco On30 was used as a default track just because it was easier to connect the modules - in that the distance from the bottom of the ties to the top of the rails would be the same between modules. There wasn't any rule against using other track .. but I figured for a newbie it was probably best.

    Hand-laying and other track. I may do that. Since I'm not going to use these as modules any more there is no reason to stick with Peco.

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  3. Thanks Ed. When I start putting together a parts list for my On30 project, I'm caught between handlaying code 70 or ME track.

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  4. It's "horses for courses" I would go with PECO everytime. But that's just me. Perhaps the 'Crazy track" is a tad twee. But its solid and dependable Some of the turnouts/switches I have will be making an appearance on their 4th layout next time around and they are still as good as the day I bought them.
    My experience with ME only extends to their HO product but that doesn't fill me with same confidence as the HO PECO stuff I have

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