I then moved on to building the grade to the upper level - that's it in the bottom of the photo. It's about a 4% to 5% grade. A bit steep, but not too bad as trains are going to be short anyway. Hopefully after Christmas I'll get the remainder of the track installed. I'm looking forward to building some bridges for this thing. I've never made any before, so it should be fun. And, yes, they will be built from balsa :-)
This is it for posts for awhile. I'll be back after Christmas with more exciting adventures! Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Happy New Year! And much thanks for taking time from your days to drop by!
I knew my grades were steep so I tried running a short train up a hill. It worked, so I continued. What I didn't anticipate was that the downgrade run would be twice as fast! To smooth it out, I stuffed a Bachmann trolley mechanism inside one of the shortened Bachmann old-timer passenger cars. This also solved my problem of short wheel based locos stalling on the turnouts. Unusual, but in the spirit of the can-do ELM.
ReplyDeleteI haven't run a powered test on the grade yet - haven't got all the track supports in yet on that section. The loco seems to work ok going through the switches. I'm using Peco track and I'm quite impressed by it. Once the upper level is installed I'll go back to finishing the control box so I give give the layout a proper full power run. [ Aside: I look at all those potato shaped curves in the valley and cringe, but trains run over them without a hitch or derailment. Cheers to imperfection :-) ]
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