… leftovers from the newbie time. '99/2K when I still believed what LGB wrote in their catalogues, I suckered myself into some LGB track components. Namely R1 turnouts etc. for our staging/fiddle yard.
Wellllll, all that crap has to go! Doing some testing with a mix of cars quickly showed that “negotiating R1” is beyond the pale and considerably worse when the consists are pushed. Add to that the double frogs of the 3way-turnouts with the perfect spacing to stall the Ge2/4 types of engines and two hours of testing was plenty enough. Out she’ll go! Unfortunately space is at a premium in the garage, not even enough space for a car. So it was time to reconsider using the alloted space in a slightly different fashion.
Bridging the chasm with a fold down section had been in the plans, but that’s still not enough space. If there will be change, there must be substantial change!
To get the extra length one could tunnel into the pantry. Yeah right! … run that by SWMBO and the thought will quickly evaporate. She suggested a much larger (longer) fold down section.
BTW the concept hinges on the “Flex-Wye” as produced by Masten Heinz. That results in a big radius and all the other turnouts are #4. The tightest radius will be 1200mm (R3) on the fold down section. Apart from the geometric improvement this will mean: - switching “Staging” to Code215 rail - disabling all the swiveling single axle units on the short cars - body mounting the Kadee couplers - if the tests work out OK.