I’ new to MRR and you guys have probably answered this a thousand times already. I would like to know how to hide the Atlas switches, there big , black and ugly. Any tips?
Well, assuming you don’t want to build station platforms on top of everywhere you have a switch, the best solution is to drill holes under your switches, install under-layout switch motors like a Tortoise (or some form of manual control) and chuck the Atlas switch controls.
If you have the automatic ones, there are ways to adapt them to under-layout use, but they tend to burn out fairly quickly.
If you have just a few switches, you can disguise them with stacks of ties, control boxes (like the boxes that control traffic signals, just for railroads), tumbleweeds, etc. More than a few and the disguises start looking like disguises, not like something that would understandably be there…
first off [#welcome] to the hobby it’s also nice to have another Canadian join us. I’m guessing that you have the atlas switches with the motor molded onto the switch. Depending on your money situation Atlas does make a line of switches in both code 100 and 83 rail sizes that do not have the motor attached this way you can use other manufacturers switch motors or atlas makes an under the table motor and mounting pad that you can use with these as well, so you could hide some of your older ones and replace other onnes with the under the tables as money allows. TB