Reworking the layout

[Terry Toenges]

Thank you. I appreciate all of your input. It helps a lot. For the past few years, I have just been doing Christmas roundy-rounds and have forgotten a lot. I know I should be be saying "ovals" instead of "loops" in some of my comments and how that could be confusing. I wasn't sure about the gaps between the two ovals because I had no experience in doing a set up like this with reversing stuff. In the past, I just opted for what was "easy".
When I still had the Christmas set up, I unhooked the DCC and hooked up the DC power to the figure 8 so I could run Thomas for the kids. I had both units set on the control area and it was just a matter of unplugging the wire from one unit and hooking it to the other.
Here is where I had planned on putting the gaps.
I added the "dead end" turnouts and the tunnels on the corners to make it look like it actually went somewhere and this was just a stop off on the journey East or West.

[Maletrain]

Terry, those gaps look like they are in good places. 

You could move the gaps on the loop section of the middle oval so that they are on the other sides of the two end diamonds, if you want.  You just want the electrical reversing section to be longer than your longest train, which keeps things simple, even if using metal wheels and lighted cars. 

In the event that you have problems with getting locomotives to cross your diamonds and choose to use conducting diamonds with auto-reversers (on the appropriate legs/rails), it might help you figure out what is happening and how to fix any errors in wiring if one direction of the diamond is not sometimes reversed and other times not reversed.  That could be done by moving the gaps so that the outer two diamonds are not in the electrically reversing section.  But, you would still have to deal with that issue on the middle diamond.  I won't get into that here, because you may never have to deal with it or even think about it if you can get by with diamonds with rails that have short dead sections.  But, just so you know that it exists, there are "double auto-reversers" that would allow you to have a reversing diamond within a reversing section of a loop.  The potential problem with a reverser on a diamond that is inside a reversing track section is that a short would make both auto-reversers try to reverse at the same time, so they would just make a new short circuit, again and again.  The solution is to have two auto-reversers acting in sequence, instead of simultaneously.  Some auto reversers have adjustable time delays, so you can make one wait a bit to see if the other one clears the short before the second one tries to clear it.  And there is even a double reverser on a single board to do that.

So, your track plan can be made to work, and work well.  Good luck, and have fun.

[Terry Toenges]

I'm trying to decide hat color to paint the base now. I'm trying to decide what area of the country (West of the Mississippi) this should be located. I have to make those decisions before I lay track. Parts of it are white and parts under where I had foam glued are dark green.
Around the turntable, I should build it up with thin foam sheets. I'll have to lay the track first to do that. I put the 1/4" sheets of foam down, then lay track on it and cut along the track lines. Pick up the track and remove the cut out pieces. Then, lay the track in the hole left by the cut outs. Then, I lay another layer of 1/4" foam on it and press it down so I have the rail impressions in the foam. I cut along the impressions about half the distance between them and where the edge of the E-Z road bed would be. It has to be done in pieces. Then I try to bevel the under edges of the so fit close to the road bed. Where it gets away from yard areas and out to the main, I taper it off so the full road bed is showing on the mains.  It looks like this when I'm done.

[Len]

I use various exterior and interior/exterior flat Behr paints as the primary base coat in areas I'm redoing on the layout I maintain at the shopping center. The nice thing is you can get 8oz 'Sample' jars that are a good size for layout work. The mouth is wide enough for a 2" or 3" foam brush.

The colors I mainly use are:

Gardener's Soil - MQ2-54
Native Soil - PPU7-24
Potting Soil - N360-7

Tilled Earth - HDC-SP14-6
Warm Earth - 290F-6
Pure Earth - PPU7-05
Antique Earth - PPU5-03

Grey River Rock - HDC-SM16-02

The code after the color is the pigment ID that gets mixed into the white base paint.

The 'Soil' colors are considerably darker than the 'Earth' colors. I use them as a 'primer' when I want to make an 'Earth' color a bit darker. The grey mainly gets used for sidewalks and concrete retaining walls.

I took an extra piece of the foam I use and painted strips of each color on it. That lets me see what each color looks like in the lighting the shopping center uses.

Home Depot and a few of the 'Home Decor' shops around here carry Behr paint. So it shouldn't be too hard to find.

Len

[Terry Toenges]

I have a couple of pieces of foam that I have color strips painted on from when I was doing the dinosaur land for my great granddaughter. When I would custom mix colors, it was easier to remember what colors I had.
I'll check out those colors you suggested.

[Terry Toenges]

Len - I checked out those colors. I like the Gardener's Soil and Potting Soil. I use Lowe's down here. They don't have Behr so I tried to come up with close matches.  I think their Sherwin Williams Urbane bronze is close to Gardener's and Sherwin Williams  Algorithm is close to Potting. We don't have a Home Depot close and Lowe's give me a veteran's discount. There is a Menard's but I don't care for them.

[Terry Toenges]

There are no Bachmann HO turntables to be had anywhere except for the Thomas manual one.
Does anyone at Bachmann have any idea when a new batch of turntables will ship?

[Terry Toenges]

After a few hours of searching, I finally found a turntable on French EBay. Then I had to use my translator to read the things the site was saying. It's missing the red wires but they look like standard Bachmann wires.
It cost me about $147 with shipping so that wasn't bad coming from France. (It's the globality Ton.  )
There was another one in France that would have cost about $250. I found one in New Zealand that would have been about $300.

[bbmiroku]

:mouth foams:

Holy crap that's a lot of dough.
An Atlas turntable would've cost so much less than that...

[Terry Toenges]

I don't remember if the Atlas one is as high as E-Z Track or if I would have to shim it up. The slots in the Atlas one don't line up right with E-Z Track. I don't know if Atlas has a DCC one. I had an Atlas one some years ago and had to use separate short pieces to get the track to the TT. The Atlas one is just a flat circle.
Bachmann one.

Atlas one.

[charon]

Bachmann turntable is definitely much better looking.
IMHO
Chuck

[bbmiroku]

I have 9 stalls (in 3 sections) of the Con-Cor/Heljan roundhouse myself, same one you have.  And I also have their turntable.  Haven't truly installed anything because, being in a very small apartment with big dreams of a home layout, I didn't want to tear it up and down all the time.  Plus, I change everything around whenever I want.

[Terry Toenges]

That roundhouse isn't mine. That is just a pic off the net of the turntable. I don't have my turntable yet.
It is being shipped now. I checked today and it had made it to Staffordshire, England from France.
I didn't have any info on the roundhouse. I did find myself wondering if my On30 Moguls would clear those doorways on that one. I still think a roundhouse would be too big on mine.

[jward]

You'll have to be careful when you buy a roundhouse for your turntable. The Atlas ones have track spacing of 15 degrees, to match their turntable. Bachmann's turntable has tracks spaced at 20 degrees which seems to be an odd spacing. You may have to scratchbuild or kitbash a roundhouse to fit.

[Terry Toenges]

If I was going to get a roundhouse and if I was doing HO, I would get the Bachmann Tidmouth Sheds one. In the pic with the Bachmann turntable and the red roundhouse, it looks like the guy used "spacers" on the front of the building so he could get it lined up right.