Danger at Crossing

Life has continued to intrude on working on the layout and getting the next Ops Session scheduled.

So far, I've completed building the first crossing on the bench and have begun to lay roadbed down to place the crossing so I get closer to the end of the railroad.

Establishing the crossing itself was a bit of an interesting time. As most folks know, Atlas track has been fairly short the last few months, both code 100 and 83.

This was also an issue with trying to find Atlas code 83 crossings of any type, as my original plan called for 4, 90 degree crossings. I was able to scour enough shops to find 2 crossings. So I was in a spot that I would need to come back and rework the area to make it fit the vision of two busy double track lines crossing.

Once I put the track down for a test fit and started to look to see how the crossing would relate to the interchange tracks, I realized that 90 degree crossing would be totally unrealistic, unless I wanted to have the interchange only support spotting maybe 2 cars.

Back to the drawing board which said, maybe 20 to 30 degree crossings would be better? So, again the search for track. I was able to come up with 4, 25 degree crossings. Hoorah! Then some test fitting with these crossings showed the issue that putting them on 2" centers would be an issue with the curves that begins a few inches away to turn back and avoid the wall. Hmm.

The end solution ended up putting a 11/16" piece of rail in to space out the crossing so they would easily flow into the curves; after trimming and filing and soldering, the crossing was ready.

So, problem number thousand fixed, crisis averted and onward. Hopefully I remember to take pictures sometime in the next week.