I decided to go ahead and make all of my industrial siding turnouts manual controlled, mainly for cost reasons. No sense is spending, for example, almost $80 on turnouts and mounts for the 3 GERN turnouts that will won’t see and much action as mainline turnouts will. I also feel manually control will just be easier to operate for quicker switching maneuvers, etc.. So I opted to use Humpyard throws. I already had two on had and got them installed on the GERN industry.

First I drilled a whole underneath the layout and ran up the two guide cables.

Since the lower level is mostly on 1.5″ of foam, I needed to mount the cable above the plywood bench top, so I made some trenches to lay the cable in, and then assembled the throw mechanism.

I then used some hot glue and some Liquid Nails to fill in the gaps to secure the cable.

Well, now I needed someplace to mount the throws, so I finished up the lower fascia.

And then finally mounted the turnout throw to the fascia.

And tada!

First I secured all the track down for the GERN plant.

Then I cut and attached the fascia for the lower level lights.

Here’s another shot of the corner tunnel I’m going to add. Couldn’t really decide what to do with this area, so I thought a little tunnel cutting through the edge of a cliff would look good.

And lastly just a shot of how the wiring panel looks today with the turnout wiring RJ-11 Boxes.

I typically don’t get much time to work on the layout during the week anymore as I’m on baby duty from when I get home from work until I go to bed, so most of my hobby time is on the weekend now. Here’s what’ve I worked on since the last update.

The Dixie River bridge now has track on it. I used Micro Engineering Bridge Flex Track. ME track is pretty darn cool. Flex track can bent to the curve you want and it’ll hold it’s shape on it’s own. Track looks real nice. Temped to do the upper level in ME track, and if I like it redo the lower level. We’ll see. But here’s two shots of the bridge.

The crossing in the background will be a BNSF mainline crossing.

I need to get a wider shot of this, but on the corner just before the bridge I decided to add a tunnel here. This is the west side entrance (On the lower level, West is going to the right)

And lastly I marked out the track location for the GERN plant and will probably glue this down later today or possibly sneak it in during naptime during the week.

The siding track at the GERN facility is now in place from west turnout on. The East turnout will be installed soon.

I really like using the Latex Caulk for gluing down track. Once you lay down a thin layer of the stuff, it’s got good holding strength. It’ll hold down flex track on curves long enough for you to get everything just right before applying some weight for it’s final set-up. A few hours is good.

I also tested out installing a remote tortoise mount. It works pretty well. Trying to line up where to drill under 2″ of foam isn’t easy. As you can see, my drill head pushed down some foam, and even started to melt it. I’ll have to come up with some other way for the other turnouts.

But anyway, the contraption works using telfon tubing and piano to connect the tortoise to a remote actuator, when turns a thicker guide wire through a piece of brass tube. Once I got it installed it worked great. I was super happy and will plan on doing all my other lower level turnouts this way. No more drilling giant holes in the benchwork.

Today I got the first tortoise turnout switch machine installed on the lower level mainline. After putting down some track first using silicon latex, I marked out where the tortoise needed to go, cut out the foam, and then cut a whole in the benchwork for the tortoise.

Then using Liquid Nails projects, I glues in a piece of perf board from Radio Shack, with a channel cut out for the tortoise wire.

Once that setup, I got the track in place, attached a piece of industrial strength velco to the tortoise, exposed the sticky side and then guided it up the hole all lined.

in 24 hours the the sticky velco glue will setup strong and it’s not going anywhere. At least that’s the plan. The velco will enable me to remove the switch machine in case any failures occur.