Making cavity for Tortoise machine through foam?

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

Should I continue to make cavities in the 2" foam sub-roadbed for Tortoise switch machines? The machines will be used to flip hard-to-reach turnouts. The 0.039 piano wire will go through the middle hole of the Atlas Code 83 turnouts.

I made a cavity for one Tortoise and it it worked properly. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen through the 2" foam. Did I do something wrong?

"How to secure the Tortoise once you carve out a cavity? I screwed the Tortoise to a wood block. The block will get glued to the foam (along the sides of the wood) and on top (to sit underneath the cork roadbed).

Welcome thoughts!

2

You don’t need a big cavity, just a long wire. I glue a piece of 1/4 inch plywood to the underside of the foam and attach the Tortoise to that. I even did it through 4 inches of foam once. Worked fine. A half inch hole is fine.

3

Circuitron makes a device just for this situation.

It’s called the " Remote Tortoise Mount" #800-6100.

Tortoise (circuitron.com)

Dan

4

Thank you all.

I need to figure out how to properly bend the piano wire b/c what I currently have won’t work. In fact, I threw out a piece of wire after it got bent and was unable to operate properly.