After looking over the track plan, I had a couple of more comments. One thing that would be great to add is a siding to hold inbound and outbound cars on the standard gauge side of things. It could go where the mainline loops around the end of the peninsula after leaving Fiddletown or as another siding where the SG tracks go between the freight house and the ore transfer tipple. As with my layout originally, there’s not a lot to do on the SG except switch Fiddletown or cruise by it on the way to somewhere else. Consideration might be given to double-decking part of the SG track and incorporating more towns and industries to add to the operating fun on the SG.
The topic this time is dual gauge idler cars. Don’t confuse these with the other, narrowgauge idler cars that were used in between pipe gons on the pipe trains. There’s actually a short thread on the dual gauge idler cars already here, started by narrow gauge nuclear:
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/13/t/204156.aspx
Chuck/tomikawaTT had a great comment there I’ll quote on the reason these were usually standard gauge cars, even though they could couple to either gauge.
Chuck wrote:
A little logic shows why it makes more sense to have the transition car on standard gauge trucks:
- There would be no need to run it where there was no standard gauge rail.
- The wider gauge makes for a more stable platform.
- A single design meets all requirements.
- The standard gauge coupler is always centered. Moving a narrow gauge coupler from one pocket to the other would be a lot quicker and easier than sorting cars of different dimensions.
Chuck alluded to another issue, which is the need to have coupler height at SG means that trying to tack SG draft gear onto a NG height car is mechanically problematic. Just like with building a model of one, it’s easier for the proto