Building the Aston Spur

I imagine the construction of every model railroad begins with a trip to Home Depot. In my case, I went to buy plywood and 1 inch thick home insulation foam blocks (each block being 2 feet square).

Early Days on the spur.

I used foam to deaden the sound of the track and because I had read about using foam as a scenery base. I think the idea of foam as a scenery base originated from an article in MR circa 1993 by one of the hobby's demigods - Bill Darnaby. The only downside to the foam, which many people have discovered, is that certain kinds of spray paint eat it up. I discovered this when spray painting track.

I trimmed the plywood with 1 x 2 studs which came in handy later.

The track 

Two the things that annoyed me about my layouts I had built growing up was how ugly Code 100 Peco track was and how sharp #4 turnouts looked. By "sharp" I mean unrealistically sharp, not sharp as in "handsome".

My first experiment with Code 83 was in building a display case for my Rapido Canadian (a subject for a future post). I had bought Code 83 Micro Engineering pre-weathered flex track for that project and had some left over. I read somewhere that the weathered track did not bend well so I used unweathered track for most of the Aston spur.

For turnouts, I went back to Peco, which has a line of Code 83 #6 and #5 turnouts. I think I went with them because I intended to use DCC and understood that I wouldn't have to solder extra wires (I have no f***ing clue how to solder) to make the turnouts work.

I don't use switch machines on the spur which eliminated a layer of complexity.

I did use cork and foam roadbed, with the track nailed in place. In recent years, the trend seems to be to glue track in place, but I wanted the flexibility to get things wrong. It is very hard to unglue track. One of the annoying bits about the construction method I used is that I had to assemble the cork like a jigsaw puzzle to fit the track plan.

Piecing together the cork.

Have I mentioned yet how much I hate rail joiners? One of the worst parts of trackwork, especially using Code 83 joiners which are impossible to open. I ended up using Code 100 joiners which were only slightly easier. 

Powering it (or OMFG x 2)

Please understand, dear Reader, that I am an Arts Major with a Law degree. I have nearly zero trade skills - such as electrical or carpentry, for example. Computers intimidate me. And I hate reading manuals. 

Going into building the layout, I had two major handicaps:

1. I didn't know how to solder.

2. I didn't know anything about installing DCC. And DCC sounded like something complicated.

Now soldering is not something you want to screw up. There are few MR things worse than a wire coming lose on your layout that you need to re-solder in situ around ballast and scenery (unless you intend to model a small brush fire). Amongst the train gear I had growing up with a box of small bits of track with leads pre-soldered to them. So recalling that, I came across pre-soldering track joiners from Atlas which I used in three locations on the layout.

Problem #1 solved. Onto Problem #2.

Once I decided to use DCC, I know needed to figure out how to wire the layout. Here again, (as with Bill Darnaby) my MR subscription came to the rescue. The December 2016 issue revealed that instead of soldering, one can use "suitcase" connectors to join feeder wires to the bus wire. Where does one find suitcase connectors? Amazon? Home Depot? Car part shops?

The answer was my local train hobby shop - Credit Valley Railway (CVR). 

Thank you Model Railroader!

Not only did I find suitcase connectors at the CVR, but they also explained how to use them and what wiring to use (speaker wire).

As an aside (and this is more for my amusement), I should note that one could really go down the rabbit hole in following the suitcase connector vs soldering debate. Consensus is lacking. If I can summarize it - suitcase connectors may not be reliable long-term and tend to bleed power, whereas soldering connections is more reliable. 

But for me, suitcase connectors meant I could wire the layout in an afternoon. Hot damn!

Next was to find a solid base for the Aston Spur.