{"id":16659,"date":"2024-03-01T15:38:21","date_gmt":"2024-03-01T05:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=16659"},"modified":"2024-03-01T15:38:21","modified_gmt":"2024-03-01T05:38:21","slug":"a-new-addition-to-the-layout-part-viii-setting-up-the-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=16659","title":{"rendered":"A New Addition to the Layout &#8211; Part VIII: Setting up the Connection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span>Hit another bump in the road in the process of incorporating the Northern SNE&#8217;s Charlton Branch into my layout. Luckily this bump was not the same as the literal bumps in the road I experienced driving the Northern SNE section from Massachusetts to Virginia last summer! (see my blog post: <a href=\"https:\/\/centralvermontrailway.blogspot.com\/2023\/07\/a-new-addition-to-layout-part-2-voyage.html\">https:\/\/centralvermontrailway.blogspot.com\/2023\/07\/a-new-addition-to-layout-part-2-voyage.html<\/a> for more on that part of the adventure.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In this case the latest challenge was an intermittent short somewhere in the track or wiring. In the end I traced the issue to one or two of the turnouts &#8211; and\/or their switch motors. Attempting to fix the issues with the turnout would require working under and over all the detailed power lines and the like I opted instead to simply replace one of the turnouts. The turnout I really think had an issue was simply removed and will be replaced with a section of straight track. The turnout led to a very short stub-ended spur &#8211; I&#8217;ll heavily weather the &#8220;cut off&#8221; spur to make it look like the industry is no longer rail served.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n<div class=\"separator\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEhLjCgn3jQCjpulsu4e_xGUxmzkVsnA3JPipaR4aFfz6mKtZQG8xsP6xJfVIV077PxbAPG0XyI2t_YSoEZP9HDRHlZ64pVNgvYe8-2vUYbghrA4zYnnMo0S57IM8g-cf-cinJIPU7XEJ0qXLtUXZIoHEAVZSw9hRYcUmrCVwUHVzmTGJzWwAT-tGRpDPU7s\/s2016\/2%20turnout%20removed.jpg\"><span><\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<p><span>Removing the two turnouts wasn&#8217;t easy. After soaking the track in an alcohol and water mixture in order to soften the ballast and ground foam I worked a putty knife in and around those overhead power lines and managed to carefully work the turnouts loose.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>While I was in a track prying mood, I went ahead and removed the track that had crossed the bridge over the river &#8211; after scraping off the ballast I used to a sanding block to smooth the area. I plan to use the roadbed this track was on as a basis for a street &#8211; more on that in the future.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"separator\"><\/div>\n\n<div class=\"separator\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEhPr7cHrS2qgELKxhhLbASN4xO3KmbcMi9ORm7EfDVDTlEKZ0znGYE2rOzppBhTrSbRgPaheLK3XqCrNLU6Al6SXFyb1_0tk2lC_yKtykMJPIrI0hfkBCcjaLIA4sD1fJPKVXIrCwL42nDL0GT6NbbI_jAl4UZcTVvu3Jm6SDB855d5ranD5GvXvSBqoP4s\/s1280\/river%20no%20bridge.jpg\"><span><\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"separator\"><span><br \/><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"separator\"><span><br \/><\/span><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEgiRT6TCgSAFw51HkQli_pR9Jdw_Vx2YsR6Wdkemicm1UqWjK_iWhMQ65oWf5M1zDwrQrraNUlpRim_3wtsqDMhjkhrW5jW5_EZ-9B7tXASS9TqReDmD4Pjg0UWSCtdEzIgjGHlPYUjfhn5YsZAdjEhojvHEBGfNR_xE3VhNqOMjit7R2HRTZv4J6kT5ym-\/s1280\/3%20trench.jpg\"><span><\/span><\/a><span>The next step is one I&#8217;ve been dreading &#8211; cutting a swath out of the finished scenery on the main layout to accommodate the track connecting the mainline to the new layout section. That is going better than I anticipated.\u00a0<span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>And although not shown in these photos, I&#8217;ve essentially replaced all the original wiring for both the track and the switch motors. All in all, these it&#8217;s been a lot of effort integrating this section into the railroad.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><span>But I keep telling myself I&#8217;ve rounded the corner on &#8220;destroying&#8221; things and can finally start putting stuff back together &#8211; I truly hope that&#8217;s the case!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hit another bump in the road in the process of incorporating the Northern SNE&#8217;s Charlton Branch into my layout. Luckily this bump was not the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":16600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[295],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-model-railways"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}