Starting with a humble semi-circle

It doesn't look like much, but this semi-circular piece of test track was a #$%#! to make. 

One end of this little layout will have lunar landing pads for the Tintin rocket and fellow travellers. At this end I wanted to have a loop of track around the pads and a stop for loading and unloading cargo. I decided to build a test loop using the track bending methods I used on the community garden layout and associated test pieces. They worked with Peco code 100 HO/OO flex-track and I wanted to try them with Atlas HO code 100 flex as I have a stack of odds and ends lying around I figured I'd use up on this project.

The flex-track rails were carefully pried from their plastic tie strip.
The rails were then curved to produce an 8" radius semi-circle.

It turns out the strips of Atlas flex-track are quite different than Peco's. On a piece of Atlas flex one rail has embossings on the bottom that make it impossible to slide out from the tie strip, so it has to be carefully pried out. Some broken spike heads do result, but not enough to render the tie strip useless. Those busted heads were later superglued back down once the curved rails were slipped back into the tie strips.

Since the curve forming technique I use requires the curved rails to be slid back into the tie strip I had to use my motor-tool to grind the embossed rail's bottom surface flat.

The curved rails are slid back into short pieces of tie strips.
The tie strip pieces were sprayed with grey paint
A truck is used to check the gauge.

The Atlas tie strip is also quite different from Peco's. The Atlas version as one side of its tie strip with just about all tie ends connected together, and the other side has ties connected in pairs, making that side quite flexible. I took a pair of sprue cutters and pruned the connections on the heavily connected side so it matched the connection pattern of the other side, making the entire tie strip quite flexible. 

This may sound like a simple, albeit laborious, job, but in fact it turned out to be a major headache. I don't recall the similar test I did with Peco track for an E. L. Moore micro being this difficult. In the end though I did produce a piece of free standing, semi-circular track which the lunar loco has no problem navigating. I probably should have done things the easy way and bent a piece of track by hand and just stuck it to the foam, which is what I did on the Way Out Layout, but I wanted to see if I could make a free-standing piece with no internal residual stresses.

Other rockets that may appear on the layout.

This end of the layout isn't going to remain flat. I have some ideas for three-dimensionalizing it with an elevated launch pad, flame/dust trench, and overhead track cover. These days I'm finding myself becoming more and more interested in working on landforms whether it's for this lunar thing, the community garden, or other dioramas I have in mind. I was bitten by some type of landform making bug on the Mount Lowe layout, so, you might see a lot of terra- and luna- forming ahead :-)