Scissors beats steam engine

No matter how slowly and carefully I try, I can't get the big steamer through the crossover at the yard throat. The geometry's too tight for the steamer's long, rigid wheelbase.

This is serious.

I haunted e-bay for weeks to get that crossover at a good price, but if the line's flagship steamer can't get through it, it has to go, no matter how much it hurts to tear it up.

Scissors beats steam engine

... the track gang made short work of the offending crossover once the order was given.

Scissors beats steam engine

I used flex track to help plot the geometry for the planned crossover.

Scissors beats steam engine

To lay the track for the new crossover, I'm going to try soldering rails to PCB ties.

I have no local source for these ties, and I wanted to get started right away, so I drove down to Radio Shack and found they had 4x5 sheets of undrilled PCB, so I took one home and cut it up with a hand saw.

This is a lot more trouble than it's worth, believe me, and the cost is about the same. I got thirty-one ties for my five-dollar investment. Fastrax will sell me one-hundred ties for eighteen bucks and save me the trouble of cutting them up. The won't be this long, but now that I've got all the long ones I need, I don't care.