Texas Southeast Belt

[Len Turner]

This week's progress...

Ballasting the yard...

Gave the yard tracks a light coat of Floquil roof brown and a very light dusting of grimy black, then applied Woodland Scenics dark brown (fine) ballast. I put the ballast down on dry track, being careful not to get ballast particles in the flangeways, frogs, or point rails. I then prewet the dry ballast with some alcohol & windshield washer fluid mix, and finally soaked it with a very thin mix of Mod-Podge (matte finish), washer fluid and alcohol.





After everything dried, I vacuumed up any loose particles and scraped any errant specks of ballast off the ties and rail sides. I made sure the flangeways, frogs, and points were all clear of loose particles and cleaned the individual rails. I did have to go back and file a bit more clearance in a couple of guardrail flangeways. I then switched several cars through the yard for an hour or so with no problems other than a spot or two of dirty track.



One note about the Atlas turnouts though: I've had to widen the flangeways on the guardrails on almost every turnout. I checked all of them with an NMRA gauge before I installed them and filed out most of the flangeways then. I had to go back on several of them after I ballasted the track and file them out again.

Wiring...

The wiring plan is relatively simple. Rails to the front of the layout connected to the red wire, rails to the rear of the layout connected to the black. The layout is DCC powered so no power districts, blocks, etc. I also elected not to power the frogs on the yard section. I'm considering using Micro-Engineering track & turnouts on the remainder of the layout, so I may look at powering the frogs when I get to that part. I ran the track power bus wiring (14ga. stranded), soldered the plugs on for connection to the DCC unit and the lift-out sections, and wired up the track drops (18ga. solid). I used inline connectors to connect the track drops to the power bus and twist-on wire nuts in places where I may want to make some changes later. Once again, check for shorts and continuity, and several test runs. Nice to see some locomotives and cars trundling about the yard instead of just sitting around...



Backdrop...

Last week I had some difficulty with the backdrop warping after it was painted. I took it all down during the week, laid it out flat, dampened the backside, weighted it down and let it dry for a couple of days. Sure enough, it all came out nice and flat so its all back up now.

Track Plan...

I've also been working on some changes to the track plan too. On the upper 24" wide section, I'm probably going to eliminate the secondary (lower) thru track section and move the primary (upper) main switching run more to the middle of the section and run all the switching leads off of it.

That's about it for this week. As always,your interest & comments are appreciated!