My layout in progress

[Mlminto]

Hi.  At the suggestion of "cteno4", I am posting a photo of my layout in progress.  Things are fluid, as I still have not received my latest order from Plaza Japan, which includes a Diesel locomotive and a shinkansen train.  No wiring has been done yet (I'm planning on DC for the trams, and DCC for the rest, for now), I'm just tryijng to make it look interesting and use the maximum amount of track that I can without overkill.  I really like the look of elevated tracks with 2 shinkansen racing around them, and have a Unitram setup which will have buildings for trams to go around, and the long single track will have a freight train and electric passenger train sharing the route.  Not modelled after a real location, just having fun. Sorry about the poor photo quality.  Mike

Edited November 6, 2022 by Mlminto

[cteno4]

Good start! That’s the fun of Unitrak, you can set it up and play with it until it feels good for you. Yeah it’s easy to end up with a spaghetti bowl if not careful.

 

might play with putting the viaduct 5 degrees off of the other track. We did this on our first club layout and it really helped break up the loops some with a tad of asymmetry.

cheers,
 

jeff

[Mlminto]

I appreciate that hint;  I am concerned with it being mostly just ovals, I wanted to have eye appeal.  Here I have installed some custom made Kato  turnout controllers from a company called RPC Electronics in Chesapeake VA.  The guy Jason there that I spoke with is it really nice guy and very helpful.

Edited November 8, 2022 by Mlminto

[ATShinkansen]

I like it.  My first setup had a similar track plan.  Do you have an idea of the type of setting you want to do?

[Mlminto]

On 11/12/2022 at 11:41 AM, ATShinkansen said:

I like it.  My first setup had a similar track plan.  Do you have an idea of the type of setting you want to do?

Hi.  I think it will be a modern, city based theme...with some countryside elements on the outskirts.  Commuter, freight.  And, of course, Godzilla will be there (done to death?  don't care, haha). 🙂

[Giugiaro]

Godzilla is rather tamed compared with the three cats I have at home.

[cteno4]

Cats, more alien to humans than godzilla! 
 

not a cat hater, had many over the years and just the experience, they are aliens!

 

jeff

 

ps old joke, cats and dogs were aliens to earth, cats the masters and dogs the slaves. They crash landed on earth and dogs escaped to be under humans and cats replaced the dogs with humans!

[Mlminto]

Here's an update on the layout.  Still changing, but I'm liking it more as I go along.

 

Mike

 

[cteno4]

Excellent, important to play with it as long as you can to find any things you love (and maybe do more) or hate (and maybe do less) before you start making things too permanent. Keep experimenting.

 

jeff

[Mlminto]

13 hours ago, cteno4 said:

Excellent, important to play with it as long as you can to find any things you love (and maybe do more) or hate (and maybe do less) before you start making things too permanent. Keep experimenting.

 

jeff

Tell me, how do you make your track "permanenet", or fixed in place?  Mike

[cteno4]

Usual ways are nails, screws or glue. I’m a screw guy. I like that it’s simple to pull up and no banging on nails and super sturdy (necessary in Ttrak and at edges of sectional layouts). Glues can be messy to deal with taking stuff up. You can screw from the top or bottom.

 

To screw from the top just drill thru the attachment studs up thru the roadbed and mount screw from the top. You can use small flat head screws and eve countersink the head so it’s flush with the tie top. M1.4 or 1.7 X 8mm work fine.
 

To go from the bottom usually easiest to drill thru the top of the roadbed thru the mounting stud (you can later fill this in with a tiny dab of thick craft paint), then you can use that hole to make a small pilot hole thru your baseboard. Then pull the track up and drill out your pilot holes a bit bigger than your screws and use large headed pan head screws up from the bottom into the track mounting stubs. Usually M1.7 X 8mm pan head screws for 5mm baseboard. Making the holes in the baseboard a bit bigger than the screw diameter gives you some wiggle room to adjust track if necessary. You can get a couple of mm wiggle room this way. Only issue with going from underneath is you can’t of course put a screw where a cross support member may be under the layout. These places you have to screw from the top.

 

for glues folks use PVA glue (Elmer’s glue). Applying a bit of moisture along the edge later can soften it enough to pop it looks with a chisel. Some also use bath tub caulking as it can get pulled up with a putty knife under the track and most of the glue remnants picked off the track. Some think the caulking helps dampen track vibration noise.of course as with scenery and roadbed gravel around points you have to be careful.

 

I’ve done semi permanent track hold downs onto extruded polystyrene foam baseboards by just driving 1” pins either through drilled out hood down stubs or along the edge of the roadbed.

 

for raised tracks it’s a matter of fixing the piers down to the base. You can glue them in place or try small screws a an angle thru the base of the pier into the baseboard. I’ve also cut little wooden biscuits that just fit inside the piers. You can either just use this to keep the piers from moving or secure the pier to the biscuit with glue or a small screw thru the base of the pier into the biscuit. For the big double viaduct concrete grid piers you can glue the in place or cut a hunk of thin chipboard the size of the base of the pier legs and cut out notches where the legs hit the edges. The  glue the pad to the baseboard and the legs will lock into the notches to keep them from sliding around and still be removable.

 

jeff 

[railsquid]

For the record, none of the track on my layout is fixed in place; at most I use strips of wood to hold it in place laterally, like this:

 

tram-route-2021-10-06_01 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

Works just as well for normal track, just I don't have a picture handy.

 

Makes life much easier every time I hit on a new idea and want to rearrange the track. Obviously not so practical if you intend moving the baseboard around, and/or are using flexitrack.

 

[cteno4]

Yes no a huge need to fix track unless you are moving the layout around a lot! I’m always screwing track down as mainly it’s on Ttrak or sectional layouts that get broken up and transported all the time. We have on member with a giant Unitrak layout that is not fixed down in any way. Scenery bits can also help keep track semi in place.

 

actually fixing fine track and unitrack can cause issues with alignment unless you are careful in your attaching. With the track more few words minimal attachment points the track is better able to settle into a good alignment. That being said our old club layout that was always set up on the fly and not attached would usually have one track joint a setup that would settle into a bad alignment and sticking a pin into the foam base boards to push int a couple of mm into better running would help… but those layouts were spaghetti bowls of complex track plans on bolt together baseboard modules that had some small bumps from frames and joints.

 

jeff

[Mlminto]

Updated photo - sorry for the wavy gravy effect! Mike

[MeTheSwede]

I've used blue tack to keep track in place. Strong enough to avoid unintentional sliding of the track, but easy peasy to remove.