Industrial module

[DD13]

Is T Track appropiate to build an industrial module with a siding/spur? 

[cteno4]

Sure, many folks have. We have a shallow double module that has a spur and a small factory warehouse in our club modules [red building in the center there]

 

 

All depends on how big you want your spurs to the length of the module. #4 point helps. On a double wide module and a #4 you can get a few cars easily on a spur and a good chunk of space for the scene. You can go back to 14” deep before you run into problems with modules behind and wiring paths, but usually 13” or 13.5” is a bit safer. If you run with a club at all check to see if they have a limit. Folks do go full depth on modules and then have a full depth behind to create a larger scene all the way across. Spur could even run across to the backside module. Just takes special placement at setup and running wiring buss under the module. You can also break double modules up into singles if you can easily split the scene.

 

jeff

[Kingmeow]

Sure can!

 

Going from right to left, this shows the spur way over to the left.

 

 

Then next module.

 

 

And then coming out of the industry back to the Yellow line.

 

Edited March 26 by Kingmeow

[cteno4]

@DD13 you’ve been talking about shunting layouts, are you thinking about adding the shunting layout to a set of ttrak modules? It’s a neat idea. I messed it with it some awhile back looking at some classic skinny shunting layouts to put onto some ttrak modules. Idea was to put a third throttle onto the sidings so we could be playing around shunting things off the main line while trains were running on the mains. Figured it would be fun thing to do. I sort of set it aside as we were having fewer club members at shows so harder to ignore the audience and just focus on shunting. We have also been doing smaller setups and this was going to end up being at least a couple of doubles. I kind of left it for maybe in the future pile. The one thing i did not come up with a solution for was you sort of have to stand in front and block the modules to do the shunting and this sort of pushes off visitors. Would work when we have done 4 table spirals as you end up with a small hole in the middle you can play from and have better access to the shunting on the back side of the layout, but its a bit of a pita to crawl in and out of the hole. Most clubs though do one or two table wide longer setups and dont have any operation areas behind modules usually.

 

With all our different show layouts and ttrak we have done over the years i do find visitors get a bit irked when you have to step in and have them move aside to do a bit of operations throwing a point to bring a train out or even fix a derailment and such, so i just kind of default into trying to minimize that. But if shows are not what you are into then no problem there at all!

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[Junech]

T-Track should allow nice shunting like every other module system. In the end, the important things are to not go over the maximum size restrictions and have the tracks wired and routed in a way that would allow normal operations. Other than that, you are pretty much allowed to do whatever you want to with the leftover space.

 

38 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

i do find visitors get a bit irked when you have to step in and have them move aside to do a bit of operations throwing a point to bring a train out or even fix a derailment and such

 

We have good experience with including the audience with such things. Easier done with DCC, but handing over the controls in a shunting area to kids and just explaining and helping them to do the shunting themselves is a really nice thing, especially for the kids. In downtimes with just a few visitors around, we even allow them to run full layouts. We gained all the schoolkids we have right now due to that approach.

[cteno4]

Yes it use to be a lot better on the old club layout where moving trains in and out was more of a process we could talk things thru with folks and they could see what was going on. Usually with ttrak it’s more intermittent thing to jump in to do and thus the bit of disturbance for the visitors. When things are mellow with a modest amount of visitors it’s no problem. Much more of an issue when crowded and folks are filled in and even stacked 2 deep its gets hard to do just about anything and doing something like shunting would be more difficult.

 

Im working on a new throttle that we could do with the audience and limit the top speed of the throttle. I may break down and just go to using the nce dcc throttle and wiring the decoder to the track. So we have walk around.

 

jeff

[Little-Kinder]

On 3/27/2025 at 7:04 AM, cteno4 said:

Yes it use to be a lot better on the old club layout where moving trains in and out was more of a process we could talk things thru with folks and they could see what was going on. Usually with ttrak it’s more intermittent thing to jump in to do and thus the bit of disturbance for the visitors. When things are mellow with a modest amount of visitors it’s no problem. Much more of an issue when crowded and folks are filled in and even stacked 2 deep its gets hard to do just about anything and doing something like shunting would be more difficult.

 

Im working on a new throttle that we could do with the audience and limit the top speed of the throttle. I may break down and just go to using the nce dcc throttle and wiring the decoder to the track. So we have walk around.

 

jeff

FYI they have something like this at the kato store, there is just a screw to block the maximum of the throttle

[cteno4]

Yes but not very adjustable! Actually pretty simple to limit the voltage going into a pwm power supply. Lets you set the limit for the kind of train running. Also want to make the controllers smaller and potentially wired.

 

jeff