Home Page › Forums › Modeling the Missouri Pacific, Texas & Pacific, etc › Mopac or Texas & Pacific layouts › I’ve bit the bullet, Jan. 15, 2011 › Reply To: I’ve bit the bullet, Jan. 15, 2011
Latest in a series of occasional posts.
This afternoon I finished building the diamond at Durand. The prototype was something like a 75 degree angle, but I had to squash it to a little over 45, and there was a 3 degree curve immediately west of the diamond between it and the turnout for the KC-Wichita leg of the interchange track. I actually started the curve before the diamond, which of course makes the trackwork more difficult. After a fair bit of re-soldering, I can now push cars through the thing without (either one of the ones I’m using for test) derailing.
The east and south legs of the diamond are dummy, they just lead to the edge of the world. But I couldn’t very well model the interchange track without the diamond.
The Condensed Profile drawings I have show the site after the diamond was removed, and they show a second track which comes off the interchange track, parallel to the Coffeyville line on the west side of it, which would serve as the north lead to the yard. I don’t know if that track was there before the diamond was removed, in which case there would actually have been two diamonds. In any case I’m ignoring the existence of that yard since I don’t have room for it, so that second track doesn’t exist either.
For now this crossing will remain a dummy. I may eventually gap it so that I can power those tracks (all two or three carlengths of them) but for now it’s electrically isolated from the main track and that’s all I really care about. There is no main track and no turnouts in place now on this module, but I figured I should build the hardest part first for once. At least the tie strip is in place.
Ron Merrick
