Since my last post, progress has slowed significantly. Outside of the regular day to day distractions, I’ve had to do a great deal of thinking about how I will proceed with several aspects of the layout. Firstly, I’ve had to consider how I am going to control the turnouts, and I’ve been working on creating a remotely controlled switch machine using small SPST slide switches, aircraft cable and gas-line tubing. (A post to follow on this – I promise!)

Second, I’ve been deciding where to start laying track as this will dictate where I finish – I don’t want to get caught trying to make the last join on a curved grade at the throat of the yard.

Finally, I’ve been using some 1:1 paper turnouts to continually test my track configuration. I’m not entirely happy with the length of the run-around track – about 4+ cars – but operationally it doesn’t have a huge impact, and other configurations tend to undermine the overall ‘look’ I’m trying to achieve.

That being said, I have managed to install 95% of the roadbed and started to lay some track. I opted to give the Woodland Scenics roadbed another try – despite having difficulties with it the first go ’round. The big factor here was cost – it cost me $6.00 for the foam roadbed whereas cork would have cost me $30.00, therefore, the foam was the obvious choice.

I glued the foam to the baseboard using slightly thinned white glue – brushing a wide swath of glue over the centreline of the track. I pinned the roadbed in place using push-pins, and once satisfied with the positioning, a brushed some additional glue along the shoulders of the roadbed for good measure. I’m not convinced that white glue is going to offer the same adhesion strength that adhesives like PL300 provide, but I didn’t want to have to carefully smooth beads of glue with a trowel in order to get an even surface – the high viscosity of PL300 and the like require all lumps to be smoothed out, otherwise, they will create bumps in the roadbed – a noticeable imperfection in n scale. Once the ballast is glued in place I’m confident things will stay put.

As for the track – my first impression of the Atlas’ Code 55 is good – nice to work with and great looking. More on that later.