PlateLayer by Svein-Martin Holt

Tonight could have been the time to celebrate The Golden Spike Ceremony on the layout. All main track are installed and the first run with heavy freight in both directions in the mainstation have been done tonight. I had 5 engines operating at the same time. Great feeling, finally I can run some trains!!

A total of 55 meter(165 feet) of flextrack and 40 turnouts have been installed so far. With both the High Line and the Tehachapi Level, the total amount of flextrack will be app. 72 meter(216 feet) and 49 turnouts.

I have used MicroTrains flextrack and a combination of turnouts from Märklin, Wright, Rokuhan and scratchbuild Fast Track turnouts with Tortoise motors. 

There are still a lot of wiring to be done, and also some adjustments of the tracks and some of the FastTrack turnouts. As soon as the track are adjusted, painting can be done, before ballasting the tracks.

I hope I soon also can start some landscaping. 

There has been slow progress the last months, but now I have installed 9 Tortoise motors under the turnouts on the West entrance of the station. 5 of the Tortoises are electrically connected to the frogs tonight, some remote cabels installed, but still some time will go before all the turnouts are installed and all tracks connected.

After that I need to build a lot of more turnouts, for the yard and the east entrance of the station. A little boring, but I think and hope that the end result will be better than using Märklin or other readymade turnouts. Time will show.