Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Weekus Horribilis

Its been a frustrating week here in New Zedland.

Following on from the last post, I think I might have been a bit optimistic in some of my approaches in the storage yard lately without testing them thoroughly before committing. Z scale can be finicky and while I had no problems on the main line, I can't have this yard being a point of frustration, because that quickly takes the fun out of things.

So I did replace that point which banished the electrical gremlins, but then found that trains were struggling while exiting it reliably because immediately after the point there was a join to Peco flex which has a slightly larger rail profile. And all on a curve. And on a hill - a hill that was steeper than I realised, so trains were struggling out of the yard, putting even more stress on couplers and tiny wheels as they attempted to negotiate the obstacles.



As such, I have today rationalised the yard storage tracks somewhat. Made more difficult by me having soldered a lot of the track together... I also somewhat wisely added a new section of "baseboard' to ensure the left third of the yard - from the Muhle tunnel portal on to where the locos are here - descends to the flat in a far more gradual and smooth manner.

In the process, I have lost a siding (FYI pushing Z scale stuff around curves through points doesn't work as well as it worked running downhill on the mainline) and have regrettably lost some siding length as well, but now all the points are easy to get to,  have reasonable transitions and most importantly, it all seems to work well now. I have one more siding to finish connecting and then the soldering iron will be out in action again (sigh).

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