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I am back! Finished the move to the farm. I now have 5 acres to build my railroad empire. I will take pictures of my first section in a bit today. I just wanted to reintroduce myself as I have been away for a good 8 months. So here is what I will be doing for the first phase of building:
1) a single continuous loop of flex track
1.5) switching will be added later in expantion
2) Huge curve diameter as I want to do very large engines in the future... I have a bachman bug hauler and an RS3 right now. Both DCC
3) I have a Super Cheif Wireless 8 amp
4) would like to use some sort of ladder system that allows ground level as well as some consistency for the may bridges and/vias that I will have
5) at least on hardscaped tunnel
As far as landscaping goes... you will see from the pictures (posted later) that I will have a nicely varied slope that should be gentle if planned accurately. I will need to spend a bunch of time getting the landscaping prepared as well as my chosen ladder or solid base.
I am in Oregon so watershed will be key. I can't say that snow is an issue but this year at christmass (see www.myspace.com/therios) we had 36 inches... a record for recorded history here. so can't plan much for that.
I need to plan ahead for electronics and power. I have not read much on that so I need some ideas. I will have a ton of little projects that are based on the PICaxe system so there will be a ton of automation. All i need there is power. I am planning on running some cat 5 (4 pair) wire around everywhere. I need to know if I should use conduit where and how. I would like to be able to get power out anywhere I neeed/want it and this sounds like a major task and massive substructure.
I am also thinking of using air for actuating switches so I will need to plan on that way early. That sounds like a ton of planning if I don't know where the switches will be right now. How do I plan ahead for that? Would I be better off with DCC and turtles. I will NOT be interested at this point in manual throws. I am too much of a geek for that.
Right now I have three boxes of brand new AMS 6' flex. I think that I can do a major foled figure 8 dogbone of some kind with that.
Anything that I have forgotten?
1) a single continuous loop of flex track
1.5) switching will be added later in expantion
2) Huge curve diameter as I want to do very large engines in the future... I have a bachman bug hauler and an RS3 right now. Both DCC
3) I have a Super Cheif Wireless 8 amp
4) would like to use some sort of ladder system that allows ground level as well as some consistency for the may bridges and/vias that I will have
5) at least on hardscaped tunnel
As far as landscaping goes... you will see from the pictures (posted later) that I will have a nicely varied slope that should be gentle if planned accurately. I will need to spend a bunch of time getting the landscaping prepared as well as my chosen ladder or solid base.
I am in Oregon so watershed will be key. I can't say that snow is an issue but this year at christmass (see www.myspace.com/therios) we had 36 inches... a record for recorded history here. so can't plan much for that.
I need to plan ahead for electronics and power. I have not read much on that so I need some ideas. I will have a ton of little projects that are based on the PICaxe system so there will be a ton of automation. All i need there is power. I am planning on running some cat 5 (4 pair) wire around everywhere. I need to know if I should use conduit where and how. I would like to be able to get power out anywhere I neeed/want it and this sounds like a major task and massive substructure.
I am also thinking of using air for actuating switches so I will need to plan on that way early. That sounds like a ton of planning if I don't know where the switches will be right now. How do I plan ahead for that? Would I be better off with DCC and turtles. I will NOT be interested at this point in manual throws. I am too much of a geek for that.
Right now I have three boxes of brand new AMS 6' flex. I think that I can do a major foled figure 8 dogbone of some kind with that.
Anything that I have forgotten?
