[:)] with all the very good lay outs seen on the toy train show I have never seen an axcess point to repair or rerail on a far point such as in a tunnel or at a wall. Is there a trap door in the center or some other point ??
scenery sections can lift out for access. or reach tunnels from underneath. opening in the facia to reach in. There are many options just make sure you have some way of reaching every area.
Steve
To add…
Lots of layouts use a liberal dose of rerailers in tunnels and hard to get to spots. Also, often care is taken to make those areas of bullet proof trackage and minimal turnouts and the like which may lead to derailments.
Agree. I put two re-railers on each of my staging tracks underneath to hopefully take care of minor wheels of the tracks as trains travel through.
I visited an O scale layout on which some buildings were of light plywood.
A member could and I saw duck under, come up inside the building, and the roof hinged up.
Dave
I have rerailers on all of my staging tracks, especially the ones where it’s tough to reach. I also have them on the approach and departure of my helix tracks. Can never have enough protection on the tracks for those hard to reach places…
Neal
wouldn’t the track be accessible from underneath the benchwork?
they are on the Pacific Southern. The most difficult is near the wall where a pennisula extends from.
In the case of train shows nearly all the large layouts are modular circles with operations inside. Thus they aren’t going to be wide enough to require trap doors and such. (Though I can see a lift out to get to bathroom).
In my younger days I cut a trap door in my Lionel layout for access. A large building community covered it.
In some of his published plans, John Armstrong indicated access to concealed track (open to the ceiling, not visible to operators or spectators) from under adjacent landforms. His Cajon Pass layout comes to mind.
A wise modeler will operate, troubleshoot and prove out every millimeter of hidden track before doing anything that might limit access. In ten years of operating my current (still under construction [:$]) layout, I can count the ‘it just happened’ derailments on the fingers of one hand and still have two to scratch my ear. All three were mechanical failures of moving rolling stock - one dropped coupler, one wheel center failure (fiber hub broke up) and one thrown driver tire (!)
Back to John Armstrong. On The Master’s Canandaigua Southern layout there was one key hidden switch, at the entrance to his ‘reverted loop’ staging. Every train that reached that end of the railroad had to back (upgrade!) facing point through the sharper curve of the turnout to reverse. The solid fascia next to it had a rectangle drawn with a sharpie, labeled, “Cut here in case of EXCRUCIATING trouble.” (My own equivalents are behind panels designed for quick and easy removal. I’m not quite as confident as he was.)
I got to see a very large G gauge layout over the past holidays. On closer examination, it was all four foot modules.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Some layouts are sturdy enough to walk on.
ROAR
I designed in this liftoff section because I knew I’d have an access problem to the tracks and even the scenery in the very back.
The scene is still unfinished in this picture, but you get the idea.
I planned this carefully so that there would be no tracks on the liftoff. I did want illuminated buildings, though, so they are all wired to a common point and I use a single plug-and-jack to connect them to the main accessory bus.
I use to just line tunnels just at either end so it would look real as far as one could see at a glance. Then came the ride along camera.[:O] All that lumber, floor and wall inside the tunnel sure jumps out at you. So now all my tunnels are or will be properly lined and ballasted for our viewing pleaser.
Derailments on my layout only happen when some moron forgets to throw a switch or like Chuck, there is a one off in the mechanical failure department. I once had a long 40 plus car train going around the layout and had a Kadee boxcar come off at a large curved turnout. I thought “what the heck is going on there”. It turned out the truck had just disintigrated into pieces and it also shorted the layout as there were bits in amonst the rails in the turnout. The only other short(s) I have had is when the same moron tries to use his track gauge while a train is running.[:-^]
i use a flip down and a narrow walkway and the scemery is designed for maintaining the layout;
That’s the key word: designed.
The accepted “maximum reach” distance that’s practical is 30 inches in from the edge, and even that is a bit much after you’ve got foreground scenery in place. So, plan ahead, and design your benchwork so that it will support access openings that you can get to easily.