On a number of other forums there have been quite a few modelers expressing concern, when talking about building a large layout, about the maintenance side of the model (will I be able to keep this thing running).
What I would like to know is just what types of maintenance has to be done to keep the layout running (I would like any answers to be very specific - turnout points need adjusted/how often/Why?).
Other than routine track and wheel cleaning there shouldn’t really be any, or am I missing something?
Or is this (maintenance) something that has to have a number of years on the layout (5 - 10 years)?
You’re right in wondering if maintenance becomes a bigger issue, the bigger the layout gets. I have an HO scale layout that is approximately 18’ by 16’ with a 5-track classification yard, a double-track mainline and about 30 industrial sidings. The primary maintenance issue as you mentioned is keeping the track clean. However, I’ve found that careful laying of the track, along with proper installation of my turnouts and their respective Tortoise machines, has resulted in little additional maintenance.
The only other maintenance issue is the dust. I happened to build my layout in a room with carpeting and we have forced air heat. Therefore, I get a good amount of dust. To handle this problem, I bought one of those attachment sets for our vacuum cleaner which reduces the airflow down to a 3/4" diameter tube with various small brushes for cleaning. The brushes allow me to easily vacuum the tops of buildings and structures. The set cost me $10.00 from Micro-Mark and was well worth the cost.
For trees and other foliage, vacuuming is out of the question. Instead, I spray the trees and other foliage with a product I got at Michael’s Craft Store…it’s called “Silk 'n Splendor” silk plant treatment. It comes in a spray bottle like the one Fantastic and 409 come in. I simply spray the solution on the tops of the trees until it just starts to accumulate enough to run down the tree. This product was made to safely clean silk flower arrangements without damaging them or affecting the color so I therefore thought it would work on my layout’s trees, etc. It does a great job and for a few bucks, I spray the trees about once a year to rejuvenate them. The bottle of 24 oz. costs around $8.00 but it’s well worth the price.
I don’t have a large layout, but a small, around the room shelf layout (18 turnouts) is large enough to keep the track clean without much problem. But I do run the wheels off my diesels and they need new motors, gears and wheel sets.
Big and small is like comparing a truck and a car. The amount of maintenance depends on the original quality of the item, how it is used and how much it is used.
Specifically to turnouts…
You can garuantee that if you put a turnout somewhere almost impossible to get at it will play up (or seem to) more often - however well you install it in the first place. Solution… don’t put turnouts in awful places.
Plan ahead… some turnouts will get more use (both operation cycles and traffic over them) than others. - you want the same high-as-possible quality for all turnouts BUT design the layout so that the high use/high maintenance ones will be easy to get at and install them in the way that makes work on them most simple - e.g. fit the motor(s) and any other electrics with high quality multi pin plugs so that you can just unplug them for maintenance/change-out and not have to use a soldering iron under the layout. Use the BEST plugs and sockets so that the mechanical joint doesn’t become an issue in its own right. (The real RR need to learn this one)!
In general…
Fitting every single length of rail with its own electrical feed is a pain when you build but cuts out a whole load of possible problems later (so long as your soldering is good). Put another way… time invested in ensuring that you have good electriacl feeds pays off thousands of times in later problems that you don’t even realise that you’re not having - because you prevented them. And another way… do not rely on anything but a direct feed or proper jumper wire to give you electrical continuity.
In connection with the above… using every last scrap of rail with loads of joiners is NOT an economy. Even if you are going to drive yourself crazy and apply cosmetic railbars/fishplates at 39’ scale intervals when laying track ALWAYS use the longest lengths possible… with the exception… If you have a 40" spur DO NOT lay a 36&qu
Yes, there sure is maintenance beyond cleaning track. In fact, the track, in my rather limited experience, requires almost no maintenance, but other parts of the layout do need attention now and then. (N.B.- turnouts are not included in my last statement, as Dave suggests.)
Turnouts, first. If they float, as some of the more seasoned vets here will attest they probably should, there will necessarily be flexing where each entrance/exit joins another rail segment. this means loss of continuity over time, but it also means that the points and frogs may need tweaking if the are permitted to flex with the weight of the passing locomotives. Over time, plastic spike heads on flextrack will wear with the flexing, and gauge problems will creep up. I don’t suggest that this is something that will happen ere long, but it surely will happen if enough time and traffic passes. Also, each time a derailment happens at a turnout, if the loco is involved, there will be a not insignificant amount of pressure on sprung points, throwbars, and the hinges. You should count on having to tweak points from time-to-time, and eventually to replace the turnout entirely.
Dust is certainly an issue over time. My plastic structure kits have gotten a thin dusting over the nearly two years, although in fairness we finished the basement in the intevening time and the structures were partially exposed for the duration. Still, they and trees and ground foam will get a…umm…patina of light stuff before many months have passed, and the layout will begin to look dusty and neglected.
Elbows, no matter how careful one is, do occasionally swipe or impact upon items that were originally carefully situated and even fixed. That needs no further discussion.
Depending on one’s skill and patience at the time of installation, one’s wiring and soldering may be found wanting after a period. I have had feeders become detached simply because the roadbed got wa
On my previous layout I installed approximately 14 Shinohara turnouts. After approximately eight years the throw bar on one one of these turnouts separated from the rails. Although I soldered them back, it never again performed satisfactorily and had to be ripped out and replaced at tremendous inconvenience. Two years later (and just before we moved house) the same thing happened to another one. Its made me leery of the brand as you might imagine.
Otherwise the only maintenenance issues I experienced other than periodic cleaning (complete cleaning once a year, from an aesthetic viewpoint it really should have been every six months but its just too tedious) were failures of several cheap relays.
Interesting topic thread. After 40 years in the hobby and 5 layouts, I’ve certainly got some observations on this topic. [swg]
First, some general observations.
The two highest maintenance items in the hobby are turnouts and locomotives, followed by rolling stock and track in general. In short, it’s all related to the stuff that moves.
I have found seven years to be a milestone point with regard to maintenance issues. Prior to the 7 years mark, your layout and equipment will generally work well once you iron out any initial bugs. Then after 7 years, the breakage rate increases noticeably.
Maintenance issues come from several basic sources:
Even if you use it or not, things age. Even things you don’t use will need maintenance eventually.
Benchwork and track expand/contract through the yearly seasonal cycle, even in a climate controlled environment. This can cause gaps to close, feeders to break, rails to pop off ties, tortoise throwrod wires to pop out of turnouts and so on. How much expansion and contraction you get or don’t get seems to be connected with where you are located, the local climate cycles (El Nino, etc.) the age of your house, what kind of climate control you are using (electrical, gas, oil, wood stove, heat pump, central air) and your living style (do you routinely cook greasy food at meals, do family members smoke, etc.) so can be all over the map.
Regular layout operation causes wear and tear. Prototypically-based operation causes the most wear and tear since it requires making and breaking up trains a lot (more coupler and detail damage, more derailments), and it requires operator interaction with the trains, reaching into the layout and so on. On the other hand, railfan oriented layouts, while they may stack up the mileage on the trains, tend to hand-pick the equipment based on how well it performs, and once they get something that runs well, they just leave it alone and let it run.
Simple method for making jumper wires more long lived…
use stranded wire… to solder it prep it by spinning out the exposed strands of metal (copper is the only thing to use) push these into a light flux and heat so that all the flux has totally gone. Push the same into thin solder paint, spin the wire back together squeezing out any excess solder paint. Heat the wire end hot and fast for a very short time. You want this end to become a short length of solid wire/solder. Do not waggle this end about relative to the unsoldered wire… waggling will lead toward metal fatigue and your carefully made end will eventually snap off.
Similarly prepare the side of the rail you will attach the wire to. When joining the two the wire wants to be pinched into the web of the rail as the solder melts. The unsoldered wire should curve gently away from the rail before being flexed to go through the baseboard.
(if you are clever you can make the soldered wire end L shaped and/or you can solder to the underside of the rail).
Once under the board allow a reasonable spare amount of flex so that there is never tension in the wire… but don’t leave enough to get snagged.
Come back up at the other end and repeat the process (although , once you get the hang of it, you can prep both end at the same time).
the important thing is for the wire to be able to flex rather than suffer loads. (this means that it should be free in the holes that it passes through the baseboard in).
This has worked well for me… and my soldering isn’t 90%
Thanks for the replies. It seems that we all are having somewhat the same problems.
When I built my layout I probably overbuilt it due to the fact that with it being so large for a one man modeler (25 x 75 ft - with almost 3000 ft of track down and 350 turnouts and counting) I knew that maintenance would be the one thing that would keep me from enjoying it.
With Joe stating that the problems are starting to show up after 7 or so years (and I am into my 6th year) I may find things beginning to show up.
So far I have not had to do anything track wise as I put so many drops in that if I lost 10% I doubt I would even see any loss. As it is now I am finding some drop wires I never soldered in to the buss lines from the beginning when I am making some minor track alignments!
As for my turnouts 90% are Atlas c100 and when I installed them I put drop wire on all three ends hoping to eliminate all of the problems others have experienced as did our club layout. And yes I am using Atlas c100 flex track because of the Zero maintenance thing.
Our club has used it and we really abused it and it just keeps on working. What c83 that has been installed on it is about junk and will have to be replaced! While it may look cute it will not stand the abuse.
Car and engine maintenance I never figured I could stay ahead of that. When we have a problem car the operator notes this on a Bad Order card and pulls the offending car off the layout right away. I usually have it fixed the following OPs night (which is every 2 weeks).
My scenery is only about 10% done and most of the track still needs ballasted. I am in no hurry to finish up the layout as this is my retirement project and if it never gets to the finished state so be it. There is no penalty if I don’t get it done.
At time it seems that others feel that there is (a penalty) a
After a longer lay-off than I wanted this year, I am finally putting pen to paper for my next layout so this info is really timely. I will have to see if I can plan into my next layout some of your suggestions.
Quite a lot of layout maintenance comes from using inferior products and/or techniques, or using superior products and/or techniques badly during initial construction.
Take the case of broken feeders, for example. I’ll assume the use of soft copper wire. The tensile strength of small-diameter copper wire is about 38,500 pounds per square inch. A 22-gauge wire has a diameter of .0254 inches, for a cross-sectional area of .0005 square inches. It will take about 19.5 pounds of force to pull the wire apart. Unless you put a lot of load into a feeder wire during installation, say to pull out a slight bow in the track, you’re never going to axially load the copper wire that much! Besides, if you did load it that way, the solder joint would probably break first! So why do feeders break? Nearly always because when the wire was stripped, the copper was nicked slightly, creating what’s called a stress riser at that point. Under loads as little as 15 per cent of the breaking load, the damage can propagate across the wire cross-section (that’s called metal fatigue), and ultimately make the wire snap. Still, that’s three pounds of force, applied and relieved time and time again (metal fatigue is caused by cyclical loading, not static, or unchanging, loading). Still quite a bit for HO scale. But there’s one more big contributor: Quite often the wire is bent right at or very near to the end of the insulation, so it can be soldered to the rail. Now the cyclical loading of passing trains (light though they are) is minutely (or not so minutely, depending on the trackwork) flexing the wire at the bend. Metal fatigue occurs orders of magnitude faster in bending than in axial loading (ever “cut” a copper wire by bending it back and forth a few times when you didn’t have the wire cutters handy?), so after only a few hundred to few thousand cycles (months to years of layout operation), the damage from the intial insulation rem
Any moving mechanical parts can require repair or replacement, such as switch machines, turnouts,
switches in control panels, etc. Changes in humidity through the seasons can cause bench and
trackwork to expand or contract, requiring adjustment. And electrical connections can corrode or
tarnish, requiring tightening or even resoldering. Dust, time and lighting can cause scenery to fade,
requiring freshening over time. If you depend on switch points to carry track current through the
turnout, these can also require cleaning or adjustment beyond routine track cleaning.
A lot depends on how long the layout lasts. If you build a new layout every five years, maintenance is
minimal. A layout for 20 years will need maintenance per above.
For a businesslike approach to maintenance management, I purchased a box of those little numbered map pins. A pin is stuck into the layout next to the identified problem, and the pin # and problem is noted in a little notebook kept next to the powerpak. Curing the problem allows the notebook item to be lined out, and the pin removed. Eliminates my poor memory from wondering what Pin #23 is all about, and provides a list of little jobs that can be done when faced with a 15 minute hold in family business.
Consider crimp-on connectors instead of solder joints for electrical connections. For the past 10 years I’ve been using them and experienced many fewer failed connections than with solder joints in previous decades, especially in under-the-layout wiring. An added advantage of using crimp-on connectors is that excess solder doesen’t drip on your face or clothing.
Keep wiring diagrams in a file and stick to a color coding of wires at least within a small area. Most of us rely on bargain wire and what’s available at local outlets which limits the numbers of colors we have available. But if you can afford it, maintain a universal color code for the entire layout.
I also no longer expect my wiring to look like a professionally wired production line product. A railroad layout is a breadboarded prototype, not a production version. Allow slack in wiring and loosly bundle the wires. This will make it easier when you change your mind or need to trace a wire.
Other than keeping the rails clean, and the Tortoise machines adjusted, I haven’t had to do much in the way of maintenance. Of course my layout’s not that big either. One thing I’ve noticed though, is that metal wheels stay cleaner longer than plastic ones.
Whenever I run into problems, I take care of it immediately rather than let it go until “later.” That way, it helps minimize equipment failures when guests are present.
Not to disagree with you on the soldering vs crimp thing BUT I have had too many connections fail even using proper tools. This is partly due to the fact that no one puts the wires into cables and properly supports them. Our Lionel Club display was this way. I was the person that was in charge of the wiring at the previous rebuild. I eliminated so many bad connections some due to improper use of the crimping tool.
So to eliminate the problem for all times I just crimped the wire ends on and then soldered each connection. ZERO failures. This was in a 10 year old layout and everyone cussed me when we had to tear down the layout for the latest rebuild. So much for the failure due to crimp ends.
BUT the IDC connectors were nothing but problems! Continual intermittent connections due to the corrosion setting in with the IDC’s. We had the layout located in a fairly damp basement in down Clarion.
Moving the wires (remember that no cabled wiring thing) and the problem corrected itself by what little wire movement was made in the process of testing for a poor connection. The newest layout is now 100% soldered connections!
On my home layout with over 6000 feet of #12 stranded buss wire (DCC control) I had a color code set up early on and it came in real handy when I had to break the system into 3 booster zones and then subsequently sub-divide each of the boosters into 4 sub-zones due to the use of the new sound engines.
I run a pair of #12 buss wires (black/white) under the track and then every 18” or so I wrap colored electrical tape around them to keep them into a cable (remember that cable thing – t
Under normal circumstances I think just normal wear and tear and track maitnence, along with some dusting/sweeping is about all you would need to focus on unless 1) you have to worry about overheating/extreme wear and tear due to excessive running of the layout or 2) the layout is neglected for long periods of time and needs restored. In my case, my layout was neglected for 15 years before I got it and am now restoring it, so as far as an accurate answer, mine probably isn’t 100% efficient, if you will.
I just can’t make my mind up on crimped versus soldered joints.
Crimped seems to be best for heavier wires… PROVIDED I use a high quality crimping tool, correctly in good conditions.
Small stuff I still get on better with stranded flex and soldering as above.
I have an extreme aversion to being below anything I am soldering! Pre-planning allows drop feeds to be released from where they are hooked up/taped up and dropped down so that from the front of a fixed layout you are going in (reaching if) at the thing as nearly horizontal as possible rather than getting your whole upper body in underneath. It takes more wire and you do need to arrange to give the “excess” wire a home rather than have it dangling around to get caught and pulled out but it is well worth it.
Male and female spade connectors always seem to have the crimp give out on the fixed end rather than the fr
To keep my costs down and my time free, I wrap bared ends in multi-connections where feeders may be close to each other, as under a yard. If they don’t enrage me with intermittent disconnects while I am tuning the tracks and proving them, I leave them bare, but with the joins well separated to avoid shorts. Only when I am certain that the feeders must stay to power tracks that I will no longer move do I get out the solder, take a lamp under the table, and do the permenent soldering that is second only on my most hated list after wiring in ceiling fans. Then, I wrap those soldered connnections with tape and tack them up to the bottom of the plywood or joists with insulated staples.
Make no mistake- it looks like a mess 'cuz it is a mess. I am not going to take the time to connect everything and bundle it as one would find behind the controls in a commercial jetliner. As long as I can keep the colour code in mind and get no indicated shorts, the wiring is a necessary facet of powering the layout. I don’t also need it to be tidy.