Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Laying Track

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After the terrain was constructed with foam sheets it was time to lay track! I was quite excited and maybe just a tad nervous since this was all new to me. I had watched a video on YouTube where a veteran modeler laid nice straight code 55, and the process seemed a bit convoluted.
I glued cork trackbed using my trusty glue gun. What fun! The first turnout was a bit awkward but even that was not as difficult as I had thought. I decided to do a small track section first son I could practice all the steps on a short section, so I wouldn't have to tear out the entire track if I did something wrong in an early phase.
The first cork sections looked OK so I glued on my first turnout and a section of flextrack. Of course I got some Gorilla glue stuck below the points of the turnout and had to wash it off under runninh warm water... but apart from that everything looked good.
The toughest bit was soldering on the feeder wires. The photo above shows a second effort. Trust me, the first set of wires look awful! I also learned that solid core wire is the way to go, as the strands of a normal wire tend to stick in all kinds of unwanted directions, and the wire is hard to bend to align with the track. Needless to say, feeder wiring seems to require a bit more practice! Also, my puny 25 Watt electronics soldering iron takes forever to become hot enough to work the tracks, so I may get my 60 Watt big gun out for the next batch.

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