Had to stay in Louisiana an extra day due to an emergency breakdown on a SW1 in Columbus Mississippi on Tuesday which pushed end of lease inspections back one day. Anyways, home at last and put a few hours in on the layout today.
Before I left I ordered a MTH double track bridge that I fell in love with and spent most of the trip deciding where to put it. I had a few ideas but needed to see it all in person to really decide. On to the funny part of the story...
Now I’ve never met this man, nor heard his voice, but somewhat like a ghost or knowledgeable entity, I kept faintly hearing Gunrunnerjohns voice saying “big boy”, and “mine put a hole in a tunnel”, and from another forum topic “it will remodel a coach car at will”. So I proceed to “kind of” listen and put the bridge where I think it looks good and cut a small section of a O86 Ross curve to lead into the 4 inches of straight before the bridge. Looks great and looks like plenty of clearance. I look over my shoulder as I swear I can hear him laughing from the kitchen. Instead of my typical power up test run for clearance, I decide to slowly push the big boy into position. Again he snickers as I can’t quite figure out how this monster of a locomotive has absolutely zero chance of making it on the bridge. However, being determined I’m good, I push it closer only to find out it will make it just fine as long as I take a sawzall and cut the entire top off of the bridge! Well that’s not going to happen so I tear it all back apart and start over.
This is where the beauty of flex track comes in because I made a much shallower approach with a curve of enormous radius and not only does it look better, but the big boy is nearly completely straightened out before it gets to the bridge. Used my longest passenger car down below and after probably an hour of tweaking and adjusting, I’m pretty happy with how it lays. I did not at all want the bridge just on a straight section and squared off to the room. Not sure why, but that was important to me visually. Currently none of it is hard wired or permanently fastened (as usual with my style of building) but you get the idea of how it will be. Was going to try 2% grade on the north side but won’t have room for the reversing switch if I do so I stuck with 3%.
P.S. if it’s preferred not to insert images full size please let me know.