Upper (North) Staging - Closing Ladder

As most readers know, I handlay my turnouts, ladders, crossovers and the like. I use the Fast Tracks jigs, tools and templates to produce consistent and solid running results.

As I laid flex track around the staging yard, I got to the point where I needed to construct the yard ladder to close the yard off.

As originally designed, it was going to be a compound ladder (meaning I would have two main branches, with a mix of left and right hand turnouts), like its opposite number already is.

Before I went down that path, I figured to use the templates to put some physical controls up to see if there was any alternatives that would work to the compound layout.

An overview of an option found during layout

This somewhat track level shot shows that I didn't have it laid out as straight as I thought; but the benchwork wasn't 100% square either.

What shook out was a couple of alternatives from the compound arrangement.

Alternative with a standard ladder arrangement.

I ended up selecting the option with the ladder built next to the aisle way edge, to make it as easy as possible to work.

Next time, I will share some shots of the yadder build in progress.