Looking for some veteran Railroader advice

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

I have just finished my benchwork on my layout it is a duckunder and about 150 sq.ft. with addtional 8ft. yard and my minimum radius would be 24" I want to model the Auto Industry and run 86’ box cars and 89’ car haulers my questions are

  1. I want to use a digitrax dcc system but which one? and wil I need addtional power supplies I would like to have two to three operators

  2. I was going to use #6 turnouts with red cabboose hand thrown switches?

  3. I plan on laying Atlas code 83 on the mains and code 70 for some of the spurs is walthers and atlas code 83 the same ?

  4. Is upgrading to sound decoders really worth the money?

Thanks for allowing me to pick your brains and of course I will post some picks

2

Hi GT.

Running a 89 feet car over a 24" radius is the same ratio as a 50 feet car on a 13.5" radius. Or a 50 feet car on a 18 radius is the same ratio as a 89 feet car on a 32" radius. You have a aweful tight radius.

The #6 switches will do, but use #8’s in S-curves or crossovers. You had been better off if you asked those two questions before building the bench. But the use of generous easements and immaculate trackwork can make a lot of a difference, as a soft hand on the throttle; will it be enough?

The sound recorder question has no straight answer. I love it, on a walk along pike you can really enjoy its merits.

Have fun
Paul

3

Grandtrunk44,

the issue of sound decoders - yes or no - is a very personal issue. I, for myself, would not want to run stealth trains without sound anymore. Those Tsunamis from Soundtraxx offer; IMHO, a very realistic sound, providing that a good speaker is installed properly. However, what sounds nice for one engine, may turn into a terrific noise when your run two or more engines at the same time - I only run one at a time. We had many postings here in the forum, with quite controversial contributions [:-,] on this topic…

4

GT44

I’m operating 89’ auto racks into and out of the Flint GM truck plant and have 30" minimum radius curves. It works, but I’m not ecstatic with the look (especially from the outside of the curve). If I had it to do over again (maybe in the next life[;)]), I would have gone to 36" and even 40" radii. I did use #6 turnouts and they work pretty well, but for crossovers, I separated the TO’s one auto rack in length (they don’t like S curves!). The next trick is finding that coveted SD-40 in GTW livery.

Gerry S.

5

  1. Start with a Zephyr. Add plug-in panels around the room as needed. The Z should run 10 separate engines. If you need more power, you can add more. The Z can then power a smaller area.

  2. Those should be fine.

  3. Atlas and Walthers code 83 is not the same. Atlas uses thicker ties to match the height of their code 100 line.

  4. Only you can decide. They do require proper wiring and clean track. Get one, and try it out. If you don’t like it, usually F8 turns the sound off.

6

Hi,

I’ve been playing with trains since the '50s (Ho since early '60s) so I guess I could be called an MR veteran. Anyway, I am in the process of building an HO 11x15 two level DCC (my first venture) layout. Sooo, our layouts are reasonably comparable, even though I model the transition period. My comments are - for what they are worth:

Your 86 ft cars may (??) handle 24 inch curves, but will look very unrealistic. I have several 80 ft (or so) passenger cars with most curves 28-30 inch. They do well on these, but frankly don’t look as good as they would on 36 inch or larger curves.

I did a lot of research before going into DCC, reading books and asking lots of question on the DCC forum here, and elsewhere. It came down to either Digitrax or NCE, and I chose Digitrax (but all my decoders so far are NCE). I got the Super Chief 5 amp wired system (radio is too big of a jump for me now), and a Super Empire Builder set. Getting that second set allowed me to have a second booster and DT400 controller and some other parts - cheaper than buying them separately. Also, I picked up two Digital Specialties PSX4s. This allowed a total of 8 separate districts. For power supplies, I got two of the Digitrax 5 amp pieces. So far, all is working out extremely well, and I am very pleased.

This new layout is essentially a replacement for one built in the early '90s - which gave me 15 years of “experience” with what works for me. Thankfully, Atlas came out with code 100 # 8 turnouts (I use all Atlas code 100 flex track & turnouts), and these are used on the double main lines or anywhere else fast passenger trains will travel. "Sub-main trackage uses # 6 turnouts, and # 4s are used only in the freight yard and some industrial sidings. For those non-main turnouts located close at hand, I use Caboose Hobbies SPRUNG ground throws, and all