I just wanted to thank everyone for the valuable information that I have received so far. I haven't posted in a while since I have been busy buying track, researching and reading everything that I can get my hands on and building the benchwork.
Well, the benchwork is almost done with only about an hours worth of work to complete and I will be putting down the track bed this weekend. I was originally going to skip on building the benchwork and now that I have it almost completed I am glad that I decided to build it because I feel that it will save me a lot of headaches in the future. Since my track will have quite a bit of elevation changes the benchwork will make easy work of it by attaching risers to it and I will be able to easily add any rivers or lakes if I decide to.
I decided that if I was going to do this as a hobby that I was going to do it right and take my time to do it right the first time rather than fixing things later. Besides, building the benchwork has given me confidence since I have never really built anything with wood before except for some things when I was younger that were lopsided. I took my time and the benchwork is looking really good.
I will take some pictures this weekend to update on status and get ready to be asked a lot of questions moving forward on things like electrical, soldering etc...
One question that I do have at this point is should the track sections have minor gaps before soldering (ie 1/16") or should they butt up against each other?
What guage wire do you recommend for wiring the power to the track and what gauge for switches (turnouts)?
Thanks,
Dave
Well, the benchwork is almost done with only about an hours worth of work to complete and I will be putting down the track bed this weekend. I was originally going to skip on building the benchwork and now that I have it almost completed I am glad that I decided to build it because I feel that it will save me a lot of headaches in the future. Since my track will have quite a bit of elevation changes the benchwork will make easy work of it by attaching risers to it and I will be able to easily add any rivers or lakes if I decide to.
I decided that if I was going to do this as a hobby that I was going to do it right and take my time to do it right the first time rather than fixing things later. Besides, building the benchwork has given me confidence since I have never really built anything with wood before except for some things when I was younger that were lopsided. I took my time and the benchwork is looking really good.
I will take some pictures this weekend to update on status and get ready to be asked a lot of questions moving forward on things like electrical, soldering etc...
One question that I do have at this point is should the track sections have minor gaps before soldering (ie 1/16") or should they butt up against each other?
What guage wire do you recommend for wiring the power to the track and what gauge for switches (turnouts)?
Thanks,
Dave