I had pretty much let this thread die, as everything I had tried to correct the re-railers did not work.  I tried and examined everything everyone suggested, with no positive results.  They still do not work.  

A week or so ago, H & R Trains had a show and the Bachmann factory rep was there with a demonstration layout using Bachmann NS track and the re-railer I was having the problems with.  I told him of the problem, and he said they all worked fine.  He then took several types of new cars which he had with him on the Bachmann layout and proceeded to show me that they all worked ... however, none of them did!!!  No car entering the re-railer in a de-railed condition would re-rail.  He tried playing with the issue for the 2 days he was there, and could not get the re-railers on his layout to re-rail a single car.

He indicated he was going to get with the Bachmann design group and have this issue looked into.

Quote from: Joe323 on March 11, 2013, 12:09:47 PM
The problem with the 1/64 scale vehicles is that they are oversized in my parking lots.  Now I suppose I could redraw the lines to make them wider.  Meanwhile I found a few of the fresh cherries on Ebay for about $5 each inc shipping I can live with that.

Joe,

That's great ... Hope you find lot's more like that.  

It's amazing how cost can drive the ultimate scope af a hobby or project.  The 1/64th scale vehicles cost me $2.00-$4.00 each, plus tax, but no shipping charges, and the same vehicle in HO 1/87th scale normally costs about 5 -15 times that, depending on the size, type and quality of the vehicle, and usually plus shipping.  

I have 21 locomotives (none brass) or so right now.  If instead of the $200-$300 each they cost me, each one was 5 times that or $1,000 to $4,500 each, I bet I would have at best about 3-4 of them instead!

I have over 80 vehicles on our Christmas layout, which includes a large car show, and will have around 50 vehicles on my permanent layout.  

I really feel your pain, and am going to open myself to ridicule from the purest out there, but I have gone completely to 1/64th scale motor vehicles.  If they are all the same, it's not that noticeable to spectators, and there is just no fargen way in Hates I am spending 10-35 bucks PLUS SHIPPING for some 1/87th scale car, many of which still don't have good detail.  Yes, many Hot Wheels cars are really toyish and funky, but I don't use those either.  There are a lot of really nice looking 1/64th cars from the 60's, 70's and 80's that are not toy looking.  

I also had to design my roads and parking lots to be consistent with the slightly larger cars, which consumes a very slight bit more real estate, which was not that big a problem as I did all that before I laid any track.

If the 1/87th scale cars were not priced like they were made of gold, I would have gone with them.  I think it's more important to be able to afford the hobby than be "perfect".  Just be consistant.  If I were being judged in a show, I would loose the points, but I am not in a show.

When I was in grade school, we (our family) got our start in O scale with a Lionel Christmas layout.  It was large, 8'x16' and in 3 levels (not layers) in our basement.  The boy who lived across the street had an HO set in their attic, and I started fooling around with HO on my own in our attic.  That was in the days of laying your own roadbed and rails with individual ties and spikes, build your own rolling stock and engines with rubber bands.  Sure wouldn't pull much!  I remember how much I was amazed when I saw my first gear powered steam engine, a 4-6-4 Hudson.  That thing pulled the entire planet up a mountain, at least I thought so at the time.  

I have been in HO since then, and many times thought of looking towards N scale, but it just didn't seem to have the detail I liked.  I could certainly have fit much more into the same area, but it always came back to the detail.

So, now that I have retired from the Navy (23 years ago) and moved back to Florida, I am still in HO.  Smaller layouts now that I am living in Florida (no attics or basements), but I concentrate on a lot of scenery and try to use it to conceal most of the track, so when you look at my railroad, you see a lot of highly detailed scenery, and then, all of a sudden, a train flies through it.

I put together a series of 3 S-curves using 22" track, and a single McKinley Explorer car maneuvered it fine, as long as there was just 1 car.  When I tried it with 2 cars, they flipped over every time.  If you insert 5" of straight track in the middle of the S-curve, it works.

I also tried a 22" continuous curve coming right out of the cross-over, and it was real tight, but the cars never hit each other and did not de-rail.  Again, as Jerry said, at very slow speeds.  I would not try it at more than an idle, but I would not ever try passing through a turnout at other than slow speeds.  The rest of the 22" circle you can run full speed without worries, I do it all the time.

I would from my physical test conclude that either layout shown (with and without the straight track section between the curve and the cross-over) will work with the McKinley Explorer cars, but not with a hard S-curve.

Go for it!

There may (or may not) be a possibility of having a problem with the layout Jerry proposes, based on the length of the McKinley cars and the S-curve created with the #6 cross-over and the 22" curves.  I have 7 of these cars and they absolutely will not run on 18" curves, and are somewhat finicky on 22" curves.  They HATE S-curves without some straight track in the center of the S-curve.  I do have 22" spare track and a pair of these cross-overs at home in my future layout box of track, and I can try to set this arrangement up this evening and see if the cars hit each other and de-rail when passing thru the cross-over and immediately entering the 22" curve.

Quote from: Jerrys HO on March 03, 2013, 10:22:14 AM
rbryce

Great piece of work there. I know you probably said but what is the layout size. Is your grid blocks 1 sq.ft.. My layout is close to yours but with less sidings.

Jerry

Jerry,

Thank you for the compliment.

My grid sizes are 6" dark squares and the smaller lighter ones are 2" squares.  I also changed the layout again to add an oil field, a refinery, a Gas/Diesel Loading Facility for tank cars and a small spur for the facilities 70 Ton diesel (I didn't attach another photo, just updated the photo above).  I tried to load the .any file for those who have the Anyrail software, but since it is over 128 Kb, this forum will not load it.  Seems like a small limit, much smaller that most other forums.  The actual JPEG's are 220 KB, and it won't attach them either.  I guess with the number of members on this forum, it could get to be a lot of storage space.  Oh well, at least it loads the file if it is on Photobucket.

Due to some suggestions from another forum, I revised the lower level in several areas, mostly to provide better siding access and return.  Here are the layout plans.

Upper Level Plan




Lower Level Plan

Well, after re-designing over 20 times, here is where I am at.  I have attached 2 JPEG files of the upper level, one with hidden rails shown and the other with hidden rails concealed and 1 file of the lower level.  The layout was designed with Anyrail software.  It may not be prototypical in the true sense, but it is more like a little piece of many prototypes.  It not only incorporates many of my ideas and desires, but a LOT of the things I have learned from other members of this forum, for which I thank everyone.

It is HO scale, and consists of 2 levels, totally independent of each other.  No room for an elevated ramp or a helix.  Tried this on versions 1-10 and scrapped both of these ideas due to the huge waste of real estate.  If you want a train on the lower level to run on the upper level, it will have to be moved physically, but I don't plan on doing that.  First, it is not a walkaround, but there is access to the center via a pass through.  The upper center access is high, about 4'-6" above the floor and only has a 29" deep "duck-under", while the lower level pass thru is about 30" above the floor and has a completely open access.  The shape of the layout is totally dictated by the room size and obstacles.  

I will be operating it with an NCE DCC control system with a 5 amp booster and both corded and wireless throttles.

The upper level will consist of a base layer of 3/8" plywood over a 2X3 frame, covered with 3" of foam.  The foam will be contoured as rolling hills and scenery, with earth cuts and retaining walls as necessary, just as real people would have to build.

The lower level will be 3/4" plywood with 3/4" foam as a base, as it will be fairly flat, but will have some elevated contours.  

In both cases, higher hills and such will be made with more foam in specific locations, and the Upper level will have two major mountains with access from beneath.  A large 18-24" long, 12" high trestle bridge will span the two mountain ranges for the mountain rail (maroon) and a shorter span bridge for the mountain passenger rail (green) at a lower elevation.

The two lowland freight lines, coal (dark blue) and freight (light blue-grey), will pass over the stream with short bridges and the spurs will use culverts.

The Upper level has 4 railroads, none of which have cross-over turnouts, therefore I can control all 4 trains running in different directions and at different speeds by myself without collisions.  The mountain rails are all elevated higher than the low land rails.  There is track access beneath the tunnels where hidden track is shown.  The top left, center and right corners will try to replicate the Alaska mountains.  The Mountain freight rail train is pulled the the Bachmann EM1 2-8-8-0 steam locomotive, while the Mountain Passenger train consists of 4 Alaska Diesels pulling 7 of the new Bachmann McKinley Explorer passenger cars, the same train that provides tours between Anchorage, the Denali National Park and Fairbanks, Alaska.  Each of the McKinley Explorer passenger cars are named after a different Alaska river, both on the model RR and in Alaska.

The monorail is elevated and passes over all other tracks and roads.  The Mountain Passenger rail (green) will go through the mountain areas via grades and tunnels, but pass over the town using a 4" high continuous trestle system, passing over the coal mine rail (dark blue) and the freight rail (light blue-grey).

The red rails are single Monorail tracks, while the orange rails are double monorail tracks, all elevated about 6" above the base level and the elevation varies in the mountain areas.

The black trail is where I would really like to incorporate the Magnorail bicycle trail.  It passes under the Monorails and under the Mountain Passenger Rail, and doesn't cross any tracks.  

There will be a coal mine, with coal conveyors coming out of the mountain side to the hopper fill structure.  The lower center is a town.  The light green areas are foothills, while the dark green areas are mountain areas.  Yes, I'm big into creating scenery that breaks up the visual flow of the railroads, so it doesn't look like a round-e-round, but can run as one.

The lower Level consists of a yard area, an electric power plant with a substation, my Tropicana Orange Juice plant, an orange orchard with picking and transport equipment, a farm with a corn field and silos, a lake with small lakeside cottages, a forest area and a sawmill/lumber mill (not outfitted on the plan yet) and two main rails, one for the Tropicana "Juice Train" and the other for a freight line.  These have double cross-overs so they can switch tracks.

There are two yard areas, one for freight staging and the other for the Juice Train staging.  I wanted an industry and I had purchased the entire Walthers Ethanol Series of structures, and after that, realized how much I hate ethanol.  So , I bought lots of Tropicana decals in N scale for trucks, HO scale for buildings and O scale for silos, tanks and building roofs and I am converting the Ethanol plant into a Tropicana plant.  I need to paint the structures white with green roofs to go along with the Tropicana scheme.  There is a pair of sidings with ramps for loading the Juice Train cars and I have been collecting LOTS of Bachmann, Athearn, Lifelike, Con-cor and Red Caboose Tropicana refer cars.  Finally, there is 1 siding with an engine maintenance building for the 2 70 ton switchers I have purchased and colored and decaled them as Tropicana diesels.  Yes, Tropicana does have a pair of their own switchers!  I also bought 2 AC6000 CSX diesels to pull the Juice Train.

The other yard is just a lot of staging sidings, a Bachmann DCC motorized turn table and roundhouse, and all the junk that goes with an engine yard.

I'm sure you as well as I know things will change, be added or moved, but so far, this is a workable layout, as I have already once printed this entire puppy in 1:1 scale, laid it out in sections and verified all the stuff, tracks, roads and buildings will actually fit without clearance problems.  One GREAT benefit of the Anyrail software.









If you see any problems staring me in the face, please mention them.

Quote from: stephenphillip on February 28, 2013, 07:29:46 PM
The Instructions that came with the units say to hold the button for 2 seconds to enter Program Mode.

Sorry,  I missed where you said these were DCC turnouts.  I don't know, as I have about 6 Bachmann DCC turnouts for my future layout, but they are all still in the box.  I was refering to the standard remote pushbutton solonoid turnouts.

Quote from: stephenphillip on February 27, 2013, 08:38:49 PM
I just purchased two #6 E-Z Command DCC Track Turnouts.  I have not been able to get either one of them to toggle after pressing the Program button for two seconds or more.

Seems to me I read somewhere that the Bachmann turnouts are solonoid operated, and if you hold the button down for more than 1/2 to 1 second, you can burn out the solonoid.  Hope that didn't happen to you, providing it's actually true.

Instead of the 9" or 18" bridges, why don't they just make a lot of different bridges fitted with a slot that the EZ track roadbed will snap into?  Then you would not be limited by:

the length of track length that works in that location on your layout or ...
the position of the bridge within a run of track or ...
the use of steel or ns track or ...
the need to fabricate the special ends on the bridge rail or ...
the length of the bridge would not have to conform to the current track lengths or...
many more I can't think of at the moment.

I sympathize with you, but I have also found out the difference in constructing a single building and a plant.

I am building a Tropicana plant.  I have built several buildings and installed the decals and created the siding spurs to operate it with.  I have many Tropicana refer cars, Tropicana trucks, and the like.  But I have really found out why the real Tropicana plant which makes the orange juice occupies 30-40 thousand square feet of space, while the overall facility covers a bazillion acres!

Putting a building or two there was one thing, but the buildings need accesses, trucks need to be able to maneover, park, load, unload and turn around, rail sidings to load refer cars need to be accessible from the buildings, etc.  (Tons more of the etc's.)  Do you know how much room it takes just to turn a tractor & trailer around so it can unload oranges!  500,000 gallons of OJ a day needs to get from the packaging structure to the refer car loading docks, and it isn't packaged railside!

To do it was one thing, but to do it right was a whole different matter, and even if it didn't look exactly like the real Tropicana plant, it still needed to look like it could function.

Quote from: jward on February 07, 2013, 09:49:51 AM
welcome.

your english is better than most who live here.

glad you like the big trains, hope to see photos of your layout soon.

and he even knows how to spell !!!

Thanks AJ,

The site you named, Summit-customcuts.com, was the site I was talking about.  From their work, I can't wait until they get into the office building phase.  But until then, looks like I need to try it myself.  I am ordering the book you suggested today from Amazon.  I did a page by page search on Ebay (800+ items) based on a search "HO scale office buildings" with no luck, and over 1600 items on a site wide search from Walthers.  There were two other sites I searched, but not a single modern office building, only a few 1990-2000 range homes.

Summits-customcuts had the best, but they were all one story businesses like Walgreens, Dollar Store and many others that could be combined to make a modern strip mall.

Again, thanks for the references.

Bob