Hello Everyone,
I've been reading this forum and the magazine for a few months now and I've been really enjoying myself. I've posted a few questions and gotten some really good answers but I've never formally introduced myself.
This is quite a friendly forum, so I better introduce myself now. I've been living in rural southwestern Japan for 17 years. I came here to photograph (I make large format negatives and contact print them using 19th century processes.) I fell in love with this place, my day job teaching English, and a woman who is now my wife, so I'm still here. It was really a lot of fun for the first 15 years, but lately it's been really stressful and I miss the rolling hills of Pennsylvania and the plains and mountains of Colorado among many, many other things about America.
I have a four-year-old daughter, and last Christmas I set up a small layout. I hadn't done that since about 1978, when I was 13. When I was a kid growing up in Pittsburgh, we did that every year and some of my fondest memories of childhood are of playing with my family's model trains, and watching trains down by the Emsworth locks and various other places from Pittsburgh to Sandusky. In the 80's, I often rode The Pennsylvanian or the Broadway Limited between Pittsburgh and Lancaster and Lancaster and Philadelphia, and New York. I rode the California Zepher from Denver to Oakland a few times when I lived in Colorado, prior to coming to Japan. I miss those days.
Since I rediscovered trains, I have found it is a very effective way to escape from the stresses I face. O scale is extremely rare in Japan and I'm probably nuts for choosing it, but that is what I've chosen. Buying and shipping things from the U.S. is very expensive and hard to do, but I like big trains. HO is just too small for me. What can I say? I am glad I've found a bunch of people who share the same nuttiness. Thank you all.
Now on to my topic, I have been using RailModeller software to brainstorm ideas for a permanent layout. I want to use O 72 and O 60 curves to accommodate any future purchases and because wide curves look really good. I use Lionel Fastrack despite its drawbacks. You would think the switches would be easy to fit with common track lengths but I have found this is not the case. Below is an image showing the track lengths needed to fit O 72 switches into a layout keeping 6" clearance between tracks without cutting custom lengths. I have not been able to find any information about this. I already have cut custom lengths for my O 36 Christmas layout because I can't just pop into a hobby shop to pick up some fitters. It is easy, but I'd rather avoid it.
Please take a look at this and see if you can find a more efficient way of doing it. It seems like I am using way too many fitters, but I haven't been able to figure out any other way. I'm posting this so in the future people don't need to spend hours figuring it out, so if we can get it perfect, that would be great. Sorry for the sloppy labelling. I'll make a perfect one once I'm sure it is correct.
Thanks again,
David
