Week 5 and 6 construction progress report

I was able to find some free time during a few evenings in the last couple of weeks and made a decent amount of construction progress.  I started out by attaching terminal blocks to the ends of both benchwork sections, and ran 14 gauge power bus wires between them.  I then connected the two sections via jumper cables made from stranded lamp wire with Andersen Powerpole 15 amp connectors.  I'm using the same kind of cable to connect my Digitrax Zephyr DCC control station to the layout.

Next up I soldered 22 gauge feeder wires to each piece of track, and to each turnout frog. Soldering to n-scale track has turned out to be quite a bit trickier than soldering to the larger ho-scale track I'm used to.  On the flex track pieces I generally soldered the feeders to the underside, but with the turnouts I sometimes soldered the feeders to the track joiners.  We'll see if this results in reliable power connections.

Next up I started gluing the track to the foam top.  I made sure to test fit everything, and drew the outlines of the track to the foam top to know exactly where it went after spreading down some glue. On these small layouts every inch counts, so it was important that every track and turnout went in the exact right place.  I did the track gluing in several stages, and after each stage dried, I drilled holes that the feeders were pulled through, and soldered them to the power bus.  The frog feeders have not yet been attached to a bus.  I was hoping I might not have to power the frogs, but my Bachmann Alco S4 switcher hesitates on the frogs, so I'll be adding a hex Frog juicer to power the frogs.

Once the trackwork was glued down I was pretty happy with how it turned out.  My cars seem to roll across the track and turnouts well.  The Atlas code 55 switches do appear to be made to tight tolerances and that Alco S4 seems to not be quite in gauge.  I still need to figure out how to widen the gauge on it a bit to get it to roll through the frogs smoother.

Left side of layout.  Co-op shed at right.  Hughes manufacturing in the middle.  Sunkist packing at the left.

Layout seen lengthwise.  All trackwork in place, although the tracks on the far side still need to be glued down.

Right side of layout.  Freight house at bottom right.  Del Monte cannery at top right.  The depot will go in between them.

At the end I staged a photo-op, with a freight train waiting to roll out of town as the Citrusville Chief arrives.

In coming week I hope to finish gluing down the staging tracks and the Sunkist packing house track on the left side of the layout.  After that I need to add ground throws to the turnouts.  Six of the turnouts on the left side of the layout will have their frogs powered by the Frog Juicer, while the remaining turnouts frogs will each be powered by a Caboose Industries 224S ground thrown.