Brief Update: Staging yard live

The railroad has been under construction for a few years now (this will be the third Christmas), but until this week, has just been benchwork and some track. Now, we have a railroad: trains are moving! Detection and signalling is an electrical journey that from the outside seems rather daunting, and one I hesitated to embark upon, but felt it was necessary to the atmosphere I am trying to achieve. This week I bit the bullet.

Work this week just focused on getting the detection sections in hidden staging powered and operational. The wire was put in almost a year ago when the track was laid, but proved to be robust. I ran into issues with the track however. I handlaid my turnouts for the yard and found that my initial efforts of gapping the PC board ties were lackluster. I was forced to go through each one individually, re-gap some ties, and even adjust some solder joints I felt could be stronger. This fine tuning is ongoing and will be necessary given the limited access to the tracks once Oakridge is built right above it.

Fine tuning the Eugene-East staging yard ladder. Can see the temporary aux power supply for the BDL 168 and a portion of the electrical panel for the staging yard.  

UP 3456, an old GP35 from my previous layout breaking in the track work. Adjustments needed, especially in fine tuning the movement of the points via the tortoises. 

Though seemingly insignificant, powering the Eugene staging yard is a large milestone for the railroad as it has been a project in the back of my mind. It allows us to finish the benchwork for Oakridge and move on to completing the mainline. We have some big projects planned for the December/January holiday that should move this railroad to a new level of completion. Stay tuned!