GEC's Layout Progress

[Green_Elite_Cab]

Sounds like a plan. Good Luck! I hope you find out what the problem is.

When using the clipper oil, you don't need a lot of it. The application on the rail heads is almost barely there if you get what I mean.

Ok, I'll have to give it a try! it certainly can't hurt. In the meantime, I should probably clean all the wheels on everything anyway, i don't think i've done a "layout wide" cleaning of all the rolling stock in some time. Probably could weather some things while i'm at it.

When you said Atlas switch it threw up a red flag for me. Check continuity on all rails including the short pieces coming of of the frog. I no longer use Atlas switches as I have found them to be problematic with this.

Power is good coming through the atlas switches. I haven't expirienced any problems I can attribute to them. I'll keep an eye on them though, since that doesn't mean they aren't going to be trouble in the future. Is it the little metal bits on the bottoms that cause the grief?

Hi

here some ideas and suggestions from "overseas"..
We didn`t use any joiners-never ever.....we solder under every track cables for feeding track power (dcc).
So we have never have problems with current.
We glue the track end together with acc glue, file it and paint, if wanted, you van youse bolt plattes tu glue on.
Even on our turnouts we have polarised frogs AND the switch blade , we removed all cooper contacts on the shinohara/walthers turnouts for eliminated sources of failures.
For cleaning tracks we use "your" goo gone cleaner fluid, it evaporate after use, no marks, not agressive to the colors and balast.

At this point, I pretty much just use rail joiners to keep the rails aligned and together. the connectivity is a bonus. As soon as I get the rest of the track down, i'm probably going to just solder wires to the rail where ever i percieve a need for it.

Our club uses goo-gone, but i tend to just scrub everything down by hand with a bright boy, followed by some old Lionel track cleaner i have. when that runs out, i use the goo-gone.

@GEC in your case i would remove all from your old layout, c`mon, try to use good (ply)wood for base ( to try save money here is wrong, to turn to account in a few years).
Our wood is solid carpenters work. we have spend much money for this, but it will work well after many exebitions, no humidity problem, cause the bottom parts are all painted with clear coat.

My layout's benchwork is in pretty good shape, and as much as i'd like to remove everything on the layout and start over, 4x8 is just to small. If i could, i would expand the width so i could get larger curves, and maybe I would make half the layout a staging yard, and then build an addition to make up for the lost layout space.

Something like the layout below would be good. In fact, i'd be mostly OK with this plan as it is, except for the fact that I would prefer a double track mainline (not really a problem), and the curves are to small. The staging could be bigger to, but i don't really have a choice. I could probably add an L-shaped addition that could either feature a passenger terminal or additional freight. I could continuous run my large freights and passenger trains If i wanted.

The bottom line though, is in september i start school again, and i won't be finished with school until spring 2013. I will have no summer off this year, and breaks are very few and far in between (the advantage is that i get a Masters Degree in Biotechnology in two years). I'm not sure i'd have time to build a new layout, and the truth is i'd rather have a crappy layout than no layout!