What you are seeing is preliminary work for testing, track is laid down snap track style and runs. The 2 tracks the EL2’s are on is where the ore dock is supposed to be, and its tracks raised up to its top for coal unloading. The tracks are laid to find where the tracks really work vs the track planning. Pretty close actually. The ore dock tracks curve around the rear as double track and yes it has 15 inch radius.
Only 35ft hopper cars are on this, there is no run powered run throughs. The EL2’s can snake thu snap track turnouts tho.
The other side of the put-take is a coal mine, to be serviced by the N&W. Max car length is 20 cars. my excuse to get a train rolling fast really. The BLI Y6b is on 18" radius…Yumm!! (yuck!) its on restriicted trackage however, no centipedes here. All other mainline track is 24" minimum.
I have 2 mine kits here now, one is the big mine from walthers, the other is an Alpine models, I will see how either fit but I want the Walthers one here, the other may fit on the Narrow Gauge which will be another coal feeder.
The put-take will be hidden by mountains or some devised scenick block, the track goes into a tunnel.
The modules above is the MIlwaukee area with the North Shore and C&NW/Milw road I posted earlier.
I built the New River Mine of Walthers and it really changed the planning for the area, a little more complex. I flopped around with the track and ended up with this bitty unexpected design.
Only the 2 center tracks will handle the put-taking, the extra left track may be storage, the right track some extra special coal unloading.
I had a train with 30 cars and my BLI Y6b and I backed the train… slooooowly, speed 1 on the DCC into the mine track, watching carefully, minor derailing from a hopper car near the engine, as it got into the sharper curves, the caboose was lifting one truck side up, stopped, let it go down, no derail, but one car was being a troublemaker on the curved switch. I credit BLI for an excellent engine, it just crawled and shoved this train without a balk. I will leave this track set as is as I have more planning to do for the area and maybe test some operationality. The HOn3 needs to work into this as well somehow.
I have some purchases arriving soonish, freeing the mainline to test run, I’ll share them when they come…I don’t believe what I just did…hehe, later on this…
The Y6b is the Paragon2 of BLI, with sound/dcc and it rox. I own the PCM as well and it performs just as well. No smoke, that is fine. I plan on buying one more p2, if I do, I sell my 2 Rivarrossi’s.
The story on the mine, Walthers was out of stock, they have it might get back in stock and I ordered it, however, I decided to visit a further away hobbyshop (Griffith, IN) and scan them around, lo and behold they had the New River Mining mine in stock! One! No time to lose, I bought it.
I planned my day right as I saw a favorite music group perform nearby on tour (ELP (-minus the P-)
so it was a win win fun day, I had to work 5 am to 1pm, and caffinated drinks I stayed awake for it all, and drove home late hour or so drive.
