It has been a very long time since I ran a layout using EZ command.  Remote control track switches have power requirements not related to actual track power. I do not recall if the EZ command has separate outputs for such accessorys. Someone please elaborate on this.

At its most basic on the smallest layouts, DCC requires only two wires from the power source such as the EZ command, one for reach rail. I'm no electrician, but since DCC supplies around 14 V AC to the track, one wire might be called hot and the other neutral, but someone more knowledgeable please  correct me on that.

Larger layouts can require more refinements of power distribution, please see books on DCC for those.

I'm not much help because I have never used powered track switch machines on any Railroad I've ever had.  I've always held the opinion that manual track switches let you be the switchman.

Check to make sure that the main rods and the cross heads aren't hitting each other. Sometimes the crosshead guides can get bent inward a little bit, causing the driver screw to snag on it.

Of course you should raise the engine up on blocks off of the rails to do this break in, allowing the wheels to spin freely. Unless you want to watch the engine circling for the better part of an hour while you fiddle with it.

I'd thought about bridge traffic like the Nickel Plate was famous for but I don't recall John Allen ever defining his layout as such.  But somehow, a Railroad, without online customers, just seems odd to me.  The T&NO had at least eight or nine in my town. Through freights would set out cars and a local switch engine would distribute them at night because of lots of grade crossings and street running.

The MP branch line back home left the old NOT&M main line 50 miles to the north, came south to our hometown, and crossed the T&NO a couple of times. There was a very run-down Interchange track between them west of town, but in all the years I looked at it I only ever saw one box car on that track, and always wondered what was being shipped in it.

To me, coal roads are the ultimate no-online customers along the way, all the trains are solid loads leaving the mines or empties going back, a fairly boring operating scenario in my opinion.  Our MP branchline's major customer was a rock salt mine that shipped at least 50 carloads a day, but there were several dozen other online railroad customers as well.  As well as sugarcane season, which really pumped up that railroad for four or five months.

Thanks for the profile.  That will help.  I'll figure out John's route.

John Allen was a master model builder in all aspects. In the 60s when I was a hot and heavy kid modeler, John Allen was a top hot model railroad property covered in many articles in the magazines all the time.  He did some stunning scratch built stock cars all the way down to nut and bolt castings. And his engines were beautifully detailed and weathered. I never meant any of this to be any criticism of his modeling. He would be an MMR if he were alive today. It's his layout that I never could figure out.

You have to get the tender shell off to remove the tender trucks. They won't pop off because there's a nut on top of the screw inside. And the pickup wire may be soldered to it as well.

I don't know, Jeffrey.  I have looked at the G&D track plan till I'm blue in the face.  I just don't see a single track Railroad having a single route between point A and point B.  As hard as I try, I can't figure out what the route is at all, and where it starts and stops. It just seems like a bunch of alternate spinning routes, circling around to be circling around. I haven't found a schematic plan yet with station names on it to show what's next after what. I have seen a couple of set outs here and there, but not enough customers to sustain a real Railroad. It's all route mileage. But what is the route?

If there is a Point A and  Point B on this layout, it looks trains just run over any of a number of alternate routes from one end to the other (if I could figure out where the ends are), shuffle the deck, reassemble, and then run out again back to where they came from. That might be a scenario on some coal road, but I don't think that's what this layout is. Where is the traffic generated? Every road I've ever studied travels on a defined route, and this one just doesn't seem to at all. 

My father took me to see some guy's S Scale attic Mountain extravaganza when I was a kid.  He had tall mountains all over the place and tracks circling all around all of them, with trains spinning and circling everywhere. But not really doing anything except circling and spinning. That's what this reminds me of.

I've been looking at a G&D track plan for a good 20 minutes now. I don't see a couple of things critical to true Railroad operation.

1. A well defined point A and point B.  The best that I can find is what appears to be two port operations of some kind, and in the middle of the layout an apparent division point that might be his former 4 x 8 layout he started with.  Which leads to the second issue:

2. There are few, if any, line side customer set-outs along the route. Or any readily apparent major, customer like a refinery, or a mine. To me it appears to be a classic spaghetti bowl plan with innumerable twisting untraceable multiple routes that as best I can till all end up back in the same place.

3. You can have fast clocks and use all the car cards you want, but without a logical route from somewhere to somewhere else and customers to provide income, you don't have a believable Railroad.

I'm probably missing a beat somewhere, but if someone can show me point A and point B and show me where the traffic originates and goes,  maybe I can believe this Railroad a little more.  To me, it looks more like an exhibition Railroad with continuous running of many multiple trains, looping all over each other, and going in and out of tunnels to entertain children.

I always liked Whit Towers' Alturas and Lone Pine more because in all his photographs, you could see reasons for that railroad existing... stock pens, oil dealers, warehouses, and so on.  I'm going to find his track plan online somewhere and comment about it later.

I thought Whit Towers was doing all of the operations functions in the same period of time. I always liked his layout more, it seemed more believable.  He is nearly forgotten today.

I've always thought that the G&D was somewhat overrated. The scenery was spectacular and the models were detailed, but the track plan as I saw it was not suited to any kind of realistic operation, but a series of loops over itself to get back to the same point more or less.  Real railroads did, of course, employ many variations of loopings to get through mountains, but they always got from point A to point B. 

Not discussed is the propensity of plastic wheels to spread dirt and oxidation on the rail and impede operation.  Metal wheels are much less prone to do this.

Also, I've heard some modelers state a preference for plastic wheels because unrealistic excessive tire width is not as visible when the wheels are black plastic.

H

 Technically beyond me. Sorry.

Or.  You could get a much more advanced DCC operating system, that not only will accept locomotive numbers above 10, but have a much less squirrelly method of address change.

Plus a thousand other reasons.  EZ command is great for its intended use, train set play level, but doesn't serve you very well beyond that.

The problem with EZ track is that its overall height is slightly more than other brands track installed on cork roadbed.  Some say it's an easy problem to solve, but I've never had particularly good luck intersecting EZ track with Atlas track on cork road bed.  Shim as you may, it just never seems to align perfectly and can present a place for derailment or uncoupling.  And I'm not new at this game either, so a beginner may have a tough time.