Hiyas! Newbie to the forum, but I’ve been fooling about with 027 since the late 1960s, which would make me about (cough cough) years old.
It started innocently enough last December. I wanted to run a trolley around the Christmas tree.
Things went downhill rapidly after that. [:D]
Things came to a head a month or so back. I started out with an Industrial Hobbies Laurel Line DT Brill, which proved to be a hit at the Bentonville (AR) train show (the kids loved it, especially when I went ‘Abracadabra!’ and made the trolley ‘magically’ change directions by letting the bumper hit my finger), which landed me an invite to the Springfield (MO) show in April. At the Springfield show, I picked up a couple of 1022s and a 90 degree crossing, and made the loop into a figure 8 with a couple of spurs at odd angles.
It was at the Springfield show that I discovered the delightful power switching properties of the 1022, which, after picking up entirely too much used track and switches on eBay, led to the current layout (dis)gracing my living room:
http://www.schwag.org/~marmelmm/Images/027trolley.JPG
For a poor boy in a one bedroom apartment, this is a highly amusing little layout. You can run around the figure 8, go point to point or do a ‘pretzel’ by starting at one end, running around the 8 and off to the other end. In addition, the 1022’s power switching abilities mean that a dead storage yard is easy as pie (the pile of track in the center is from a now-abandoned extension to the lavatory; I decided that dealing with 027 track on the floor didn’t go well with morning ablutions).
From one IR Brill, the fleet has expanded by three MTH Bump-And-Go trolleys (Third Avenue, PTC and Main St.).
I highly recommend traction for 027 modeling in a tight space (this entire layout is about 4 x 5). The cars have no problems on the curves, one car makes an entire train and who doesn’t love a trolley? [:)]
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