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I have been dropping a piece of track on my bench whenever I needed to test something on the rollers for years, so I thought it was finally time to do a real test track.  Nothing fancy, I just wanted functional.  I had tons of Fastrack laying around, so the track selection was easy, already had the raw materials.  I also had some scrap lumber, and 3/4" was the perfect size.  It turns out that the rollers raise the locomotive exactly 3/4", so having a step for the tender to set directly on the track works perfectly and allows me to test the locomotive connected with a wireless tether to the tender.  The whole assembly is 48" long, the lower section os 30" long, and the upper section is 15" long.  That left me 3" on the end for connections.

To avoid ever having to take this apart, all the track segments are joined by soldered #18 jumpers, no sense depending on the rail joints here.

Test Track N1

My connections are all made on a piece of Lexan, it so happens I have a lot of that laying around, and it's perfect for this kind of application. 

I have three connections and a toggle switch.  The red terminal is, obviously, the center rail.  The two outer black terminals are the outside rails, they are isolated from each other.  The switch allows me to common the outside rails when desired.  Having the outside rails isolated allows me to plop a 2-rail locomotive on the rollers for testing.  I spaced the terminals for double banana jacks, normally it's just connecting to one outside rail and the center rail with the switch providing the connection to the other rail.  For 2-rail testing, I just use discrete banana leads to bring the power to the track.

Test Track N2

It's a basic test track, but quite functional.  It was also very quick to slap together as I needed to get busy using it.

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  • Test Track N1
  • Test Track N2
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Funny you should ask Chris, yes they're all powered.  However...

Turns out that sometimes it would be useful to independently power them, I just ran into a situation where I'd like to be able to interrupt power to the tender.  That being said, I just popped the top track off and I'm adding a switch and a pilot light to indicate that the upper deck is powered.  The good thing is, with Fastrack, adding a little switch through the roadbed to do stuff like this is easy, so that's how it'll be done.  I'm also adding an LED to show that power is on that section.

Mike, they're very easy to hack together, no rocket science here!   The first couple of uses, I realized that I should be able to separately cycle power on the tender, so I added the capability to do so.  Many Legacy locomotives have audio issues with power interrupts on the tender, so this allows me to diagnose those easily.  The little POWER LED was just icing on the cake, but why not?

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  • mceclip0
martind posted:

John,  How do you add the TMCC signal to your test track?  Run jumpers from your layout?

My test bench has a transformer, TMCC command base, and a TIU.  When I plug in the cable, I have DCS, TMCC, or conventional operation available on the test track.  I also have a USB cable over to the computer to load DCS sound and chain files.  For special purposes, I can power the track TIU with DC, that's useful for some 2-rail stuff or to load DCS files.

PRRronbh posted:

John, can you test run large scale steam like the PRR S1 & S2, UP Big Boy 9000 all FEF's, the Lionel Berk's 675 & 1225 at flank speed (120 SMPH) forward & reverse on this set up?

Sure, I rarely test at full throttle, but there's no reason I couldn't if I wanted to.  I do crank them up to a pretty good clip on the rollers, they do fine.  An occasional cruise control decoder failure runs them at full speed, as long as they don't jump off the rollers, I'm still OK.

gunrunnerjohn 
PRRronbh posted:

John, can you test run large scale steam like the PRR S1 & S2, UP Big Boy 9000 all FEF's, the Lionel Berk's 675 & 1225 at flank speed (120 SMPH) forward & reverse on this set up?

Sure, I rarely test at full throttle, but there's no reason I couldn't if I wanted to.  I do crank them up to a pretty good clip on the rollers, they do fine.  An occasional cruise control decoder failure runs them at full speed, as long as they don't jump off the rollers, I'm still OK.

Thought not.  When I bought my first two sets of JAK rollers set them up on a piece of tubular track with my MTH PRR S1.  At higher speeds not even flank the rollers would twist and turn and fly off.  That is why I came up with my design can test any and all steam including the Triplex and all two unit diesels including my Centipede up to flank. 

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