3-tier staging loop

Once the track was down and tested on the first tier I made steady progress on the next two tiers. This picture was taken on January 17:


There's a lot new here since the last picture. For one thing, this shows the loop section removed from the corner desk and sitting on the adjacent desk. As I mentioned earlier, I frequently did this to allow ease of access. The picture also shows the middle tier with track in place and wired (also tested, although you can't see that).

If you look closely at the top tier surface you'll see the track location drawn with a wide permanent marker. A couple methodology points worth noting related to this:

1. The use of the blue roadbed is great in all respects except that it's very hard to see track lines that were drawn on the subroadbed underneath. The permanent marker solves this nicely. Then, after the blue roadbed is glued on I will go over the same lines again with the marker so that it's easy to lay the track in the right location.
   
2. There are a number of ways to draw curves on the layout. Where possible I use a home-built compass consisting of a yard stick (or similar, for larger radii than 36") with holes drilled for the center and the exact radius. But that's not always the possible or easy to set up. So, for staging areas I've cut out an 18" radius circle from a large piece of box cardboard and use that as a drawing guide. I also have made smaller cardboard arcs for larger radii up to 39" that are helpful for drawing short sections of a curve.

You may notice that the wires leading to the track are blue and yellow. This is because all three loops are Auto Reverse (AR) sections, something I'll describe in an upcoming wiring post.

You'll also see a lot of clutter on the desk and layout area -- this is a normal cycle: create clutter, pick up and vacuum, repeat.