Since a lot of what I’m doing on my new layout is completely new to me, I decided to pick up a spare piece of extruded foam to use as a ‘practice’ piece before starting to cut and glue things to the completed benchwork pieces. That way, if I mess up, it’s no big deal. So I cut the foam in half, since a 2x4’ sections is a lot easier to work with. I laid out a simple straight through line with a single turnout to a siding. Obviously not very big, but operable with a loco and a couple of cars. Not a big concern, the main reason for doing this was tracklaying and scenery practice, not running trains.
I used a Dremel Multipurpose Cutter attachment to carve a hole to mount a Tortoise switch machine from the top as seen here (my source fot his idea): http://www.pbase.com/tracktime/norcalf
Note: I need a better way of cutting the through hole part of this. The Dremel cuts out the 1/16" inset just fine, but a knife is not the ideal tool to cut the rest of the wya through the foam
The Tortoise and board dropped right in, no problem. I feel confident this method will work on the actual layout.
Next I put down a beadof Elmer’s glue and put down the straight segment of Woodland Scenics Track Bed. Very easy to work with. I used a bunch of pushpins to hold it down while the glue dried.
Next I cut a piece of the Track bed for the diverging route and glued that in place. Then I attached sets of my homemade terminal joiners to each leg of the turnout (Atlas Code 83 #6). Yes, for this short segment this is overkill, but I wanted to do things the same way I intend to on the actual layout. I drilled holes throught he foam at the joint locations to feed the wires through. Foam is nice - by ‘drilling’ holes I mean I took a drill bit in my hand and turned it through the foam. I also drilled a hole where the rivet is on the frog for soldering a feeder wire there. I intend to power all my Atlas frogs thruogh the Tortoise contacts, so no exceptions on this test segment.