HOn3 Barlow Pass Layout | Track, Turnouts and DCC Wiring

[Music] Howdy folks. Dave here at Thunder Mesa Studio where this week I'm back working on the H3 Barlo Pass layout. And I think it's high time we got some track laid and some trains running. Don't you? Barlo Pass is my little 4x8 slice of Colorado Rocky Mountain narrow gauge. And my goal this week is to uh get the cork roaded down and the track and turnouts put in up here in the town of Barlo Pass and then get all of that wired for DCC operations. I'm not going to be laying all of the track this week for the entire layout. Mostly because I have a couple of big bridges that need to be built before I can really do that. No, my focus is just going to be on the town area up here. Getting the track laid, getting it wired, getting everything fine-tuned and running well. So, let's take off these models here, which I've put in place temporarily, because the first thing I want to do is sand down this joint right here where these two sections of plywood come together. It uh it could be a little smoother. I think that'll work. Now, these beautiful customuilt turnouts that I'm using on Barlo Pass were graciously provided by Alan Lewazo over at Empire Track Works. And I'll put a link in the description down below so you can check out all of the stuff he has to offer. And before I go any further on this, uh, I need to determine which of these turnouts that he built for me goes where. You see, they're all number six turnouts, rights and lefts, number sixes. But um he very thoughtfully asked uh which side of the turnouts do I want the throw bar to be on for each of of the turnouts on the plan. And that's a very important consideration. And the reason that's important is say you have, you know, a crossover with two uh turnouts uh you know parallel to each other. You want that throw bar on the straight route, right? Not in the middle in between those two tracks where it's going to get in the way. So now I have lettered each of the turnout locations and where the throw bar is going on this one. It can go either way. Letter them A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. And then I put a corresponding letter on each of these skeleton turnout kits that I got from Allen. And then when it comes time to put these together, put the the rest of the ties in and lay them on the layout, I'll know exactly where each one is supposed to go. I've also glued down some of these FastTracks templates. Cut them out and glued them down in each of the turnout locations. This is a PDF you can download off of the FastTracks website for free. It's a great service that they offer. These are all for number six turnouts. And I'm going to lay the cork roaded right over the top of these. And that way I'll get an alignment which is as perfect as I can make it for when we install the turnouts. Now before I start laying down that cork roaded, I just want to show you where I deviated from the plan right here. Look on the original plan. This crossover is flipped the other way. And the reason I flipped it this way, this was a suggestion from a viewer who saw the plan and said, "You know what? Operationally, it'll work a lot better if you flip that crossover. That way, when a train pulls in, the locomotive can just uncouple right here, pull out here onto the stub, and then back around and do the runaround maneuver. And uh you know what? They were absolutely right. So, hey, keep those good suggestions coming. So, what do we use for H3 roaded anyway? It's not like there's a lot of commercial products available. Well, fortunately, there are a lot of commercial products available for Ncale. And as it turns out, this Midwest Ncale pork road bed works really, really well for H3. Also, I'll just lay down a bead of yellow glue. Use a brush to spread it out a little bit. I'm going to start down here at this end where the trestle is going to be, one of the trestles, and just follow that track center line. and use the thumb tacks to hold it in place till the glue dries. And then we put the other side in just like that. And now I'll fill in all of this middle part. And this just involves cutting and fitting these pieces of cork to uh match the turnouts. And uh continue to follow those center lines. Wait, wait. Time out. I thought I had another entire package of Nscale Corp roaded. More than enough to do all of this. I bought some off of eBay a couple months ago. You see where this is going, right? Well, lo and behold, I open it up to find out that it's not Nscale cork road bed. It's HO scale cork road bed. So, you know, now I've got to beg, borrow, or steal some Nscale cork roaded from somewhere or find some uh 8 inch cork gasket material in order to finish this. Uh, unfortunately, I was unable to find any nscale cork road bed anywhere, at least none that I could get in a timely enough fashion for this project video. But I was able to find some 1/8 inch thick cork material. And now I'm cutting it into some strips that are 9/16 of an inch wide to match the width of the the separated cork road bed. And that that way I can continue to lay it down in the same way. So now I just need to go and cut a whole bunch of strips like that. Now I can finish up this roaded using the same techniques I did with the Midwest stuff. Cutting each strip to fit, gluing it down. [Music] And just like before, have to do some custom fitting like this for the turnouts. Truth is, it's actually easier with these pieces that aren't beveled on the edges. [Music] Going handheld here to give you guys a better view from up top. Here's that completed crossover with the glue drying. Now, you know, I could have cut pads for the turnouts out of that sheet cork. That'd be another way to do it. Um, but this way using the strips is more economical, at least from a material standpoint. You'll save a little time by cutting out the pads, but you'll save a lot more material by by using the strips and cutting each one to fit this way. Also wanted to show you over here, this switch goes to uh the service track, which basically goes around here behind the coing tower and the sandhouse, which will be right here. I don't know how much room I'm going to need for all of that yet. So, I'm just cutting the roaded right off here. And we will finish it at a future date. [Music] One thing I can do while I wait for that glue to dry is install the DCC bus. Got some uh 14 gauge wire here in red and black insulation. And you want a heavyduty wiring like this because it's not only carrying the electricity for the trains, but the digital signal as well. I'm using a DCC system from NCE. And we're going to run this wiring bus beneath the roaded for pretty much the entire run of the layout. That way, when it comes to laying track, I can drop feeders down every 3 feet or so and tap in directly to that power and that digital signal. Going to start over here at the end of track where this is eventually going to connect to a staging yard or our future module. And I'm measuring down about two and a half inches from the roaded and going right through the risers, which seems to be the most expedient way to do it. About a quarter inch hole. Reason I measure down about two and a half inches is that's going to give me room to work when it comes time to drop those feeders down. coming back around the corner here. Now, in some spots where it's not convenient to go through the riser, use an eyebolt instead or eye screw and just run the wires through that. As long as you keep them relatively close to the track bed and close to each other, you should be in good shape. And this brings us back around to where the main controls are going to be, where the panel is going to be located for plugging in the uh the NCE power cap. I've determined that eventually this kind of central area right here is where all the controls for the layout are going to be. I haven't quite figured out how all that's going to, you know, work together yet. And I don't have any fascia on here. So, I'm just going to temporarily attach the panel to the bench work right here. And that'll give us a place to hook up while we test everything out. Now with the glue dry, I've taken all the thumbtacks out and I'm going back with my sanding block and leveling off everything, making sure it's all nice and smooth for track laying. No, no bumps or high spots. And I'm also beveling off the edges of that sheet cork that we used so it'll match the rest of the road bed nicely. But before I can lay the track, I need to finish building the turnouts, which are some code 70 rail soldered to these PC circuit board ties. So, I have to go in and add all the rest of the ties. There's a couple of different ways to do this as usual. Um, one would be to I mean, the old school way would be to put the ties down on the roaded and then spike everything down on top of them. That will certainly work. uh but it's labor intensive and time consuming. So I'm going to use sort of a modified version of the uh the FastTracks method. If you go on the FastTracks website, uh they have a method for doing this where you use some uh contact adhesive uh on the rails and on the ties and it speeds things up quite a bit. So, I have one of these FastTracks templates that shows me the proper tie positions. And uh Allan is kind enough to provide all of the pre-cut ties and their proper positions for these skeleton turnout kits. So, what I have determined that works the best here is to uh take some double stick tape, put it right where those PC circuit board ties are, and then take that that uh turnout, turn it upside down, align it with the drawing, stick it down to the tape, and then I can go in and um attach each of the ties individually. This uh deviates from the FastTracks method in that they want you to glue this entire assembly down to the ties at the same time. They sell a product called uh I think it's called Quicksticks, which is a laser cut um laser cut run of ties for the uh for the turnouts and you you know use the contact adhesive, glue the whole thing down at once. I found that I get much better results if I do the ties one at a time. So, that's what we're gonna do. Take some of this Plyabond contact adhesive. Just shook it up real good. Not a great idea to squeeze it directly on the backs of the rails or onto the ties. That would be a mess. Use a toothpick. The reason I found that this works better is that when you try to do the whole turnout at once, um, some of them just aren't going to stick. You're you're going to have high spots and low spots. Variations creep into these materials, no matter how hard that we try to keep everything perfect and the same. You know, variations do creep in. So, I just find that it works a lot better to try and do this one tie at a time. And you want to apply the contact cement to both surfaces. And when it starts to set up and get tacky, that's when you can apply it to the back of the rails. And I'm just lining it up with the template. Pressing down firmly. Now, these aren't going to be as as pretty and perfect as if you used a FastTracks jig or something like that, but that's okay. I've I've looked at a lot of narrow gauge track and uh very little of it is pretty imperfect. A lot of variety. I find that doing this this way also greatly reduces the risk of getting this goopy stuff on the rails. which you're going to need some acetone to remove. If you do, as always, a word of caution, by the way, when working with any sort of solventbased glues or paints or anything like that, do it in a well ventilated area. Avoid contact with skin as much as possible. Stuff's not good for you. Down in the frog section right here, the only challenge is uh working around this pigtail of wires. And now I'm getting down into the point section where these points move back and forth. And I don't want to put any glue at all on those moving parts. Just on the outside stock rails. Again, pressing down on each one of these as I go, making sure it is well adhered. And this is a challenging area down here where the points close against the stock rails. Uh just because it's been filed back, which is great because it gives you a really nice positive lock on each side with with the points on the stock rails. But there's not a lot of meat there to attach the ties to. So, takes a little bit of finesse. I should be able to just pop this off with the double stick tape. Go. One down and uh four more to go. And by the way, as I build each one of these, I'm making sure that the letter from that particular kit goes with it so it uh ends up in the right spot on the layout. Okay, all the turnouts are built and that means it's time to start laying some track. Now, when laying track, I believe it's always a good idea to start with the turnouts and then cut everything else to fit. And uh for each one of these, I need to drill a hole down through the cork and the plywood to accommodate this little pigtail of wire. About a quarter inch hole for each one. Most important thing is to get it located in the right spot. Once the hole is cut, I want to carve out a little bit more of the cork around the top just to make allowance for that uh that little lump of wiring. Not bad. Now I need to cut a short section of track between these two turnouts. For all the other track that's not a turnout on the layout, I'm using some Micro Engineering Code 70 H3 flex track. To hold the track in place, I'm using some DAP Alex Plus uh silicon coaul, which works really, really well. Takes a little while to dry, but when it dries, it's uh it's nice and clear. I like to spread it out with a putty knife. And I'm avoiding the entire central part of the turnout here where the moving parts are. You just want it kind of a thin skin here. Wires. Once again, go down through the hole. Oh, almost forgot the rail joiners. Using some Walther's code 70 rail joiners. And I'm uh not going to be soldering the rail connections around the turnouts. I don't find it's necessary and uh it allows for a seasonal expansion and contraction. I will be soldering on the sharper curves. However, go. Now I'll put a little weight on that. We'll slide these rail joiners back into place here. And on these longer pieces, I'll get them into position. One thing I like about this microengineering track is that uh when you when you flex it, when you bend it, it tends to hold that position following the center lines of the roaded. And then I'm just going to add a couple of track nails to hold this until the glue dries. And then I'll uh I'll go back and I'll remove them. And you can see I'm not pushing them all the way in. Only going about that far. That way I can remove them easily tomorrow after this is uh had a chance to set up. One thing you might notice that I'm not doing is I'm not drilling a hole down here for a switch machine to activate the points. And that is because these switches at the front of the layout will be thrown by hand. That's something special in mind for those. But the ones back in the back there, uh, when I get around to doing those, those will have, uh, probably tortoise slow motion switch machines on them. I should mention that I'm using some Zuron flush cutting rail nippers to uh all of these pieces to length. And down here where I have this crossover, I don't need to do any sort of special gapping on the rails. Like if I were using say a electrofrog turnouts like the ones that Pico makes, I would want to have a gap right here or some insulated rail joiners. But since both of these turnouts have isolated frogs, I don't need to worry about that. Uh it's already gapped. This is the last of the parallel tracks through town here. Believe I forgot to mention that the track centers here are two and a half two and a quarter inches apart. Uh, which gives you plenty of clearance in H3. Always sight down the track, especially coming out of turnouts. Make sure uh everything is lined up right. Before I install the final turnout, I thought I should probably let you in on what these wires are for in the back here. Uh there's three wires coming off the back. Uh the central wire, the brown one, is connected to the frog. Now, you're probably familiar with frog wiring like that, right? So, there's a wire coming from the frog. It would go to uh some sort of polarity reversing unit on a slow motion switch machine or a toggle switch or something like that so that the frog can be powered when the trains are passing through without causing a short circuit. Well, this has that, but it also has power wires for the other rails as well. uh a red wire and an orange wire and those will get hooked up to the DCC power bus on the for the inside and outside rail. So absolutely every single part of this turnout will be powered and we won't have any stalls or anything like that. Now for each one of these turnouts going back and adding a little pad here of cork underneath the throw bar. And these are about 5/8 of an inch wide by an inch long. Well, now I need a way to throw the points on the turnout, get a nice positive lock on the stock rail, the diverging rail, and ideally we want a method that is also going to route power to the frog at the same time. There are a lot of commercial products out there uh that you can use, including these uh nifty tortoise slow motion switch machines. I am going to be using these later in the build on those turnouts on the back side of the layout. But up here in the front, as I mentioned earlier, I want to be able to throw these by hand just as if I was uh you know, a breakman working in the yard. Fortunately, there is a method out there which is easy, well, relatively easy and inexpensive, and it's to use these electrical slide switches. This is a double pole, double throw electrical switch, and this is a method that's been around for decades. I remember reading about this, I think it was in Model Railroader magazine many, many years ago. I don't know who f first came up with the idea, but it's it's rather brilliant. Let me show you how it works. I was able to get a bag of about 20 of these for I think it was like 10 12 bucks. Uh which is very very economical. You price other ground throw methods. And the first thing I need to do is determine where I want it to be. I want to put it about 3/4 of an inch away from this pad right here. So, we need to create a little square hole. That hole actually needs to be about 5/16 by 5/8 of an inch. And use a keyhole saw to take out the rest of that material. and continue to carve and file away until the switch fit down in there. There we go. That should be good enough. So, you want it to fit down in there so it's it's snug but still removable. You just don't want any play in it. Now, I want to drill a hole right to the middle of this plastic switch. Now I've drilled a hole down through the PC circuit board tie because I've got some wire here. We're going to make a little linkage between turnout and the slide switch. This is some uh 0.020 music wire or spring wire if you prefer. Put a little right angle bend one end. And then I want to put a Zbend in. I'm going to go out about, let's see, about a half an inch. So, we've got a little jog in the wire right there. And this is important because the length of throw on the slide switch is longer than the length of throw on the turnout. So, you need something to absorb that that difference. We need a little spring there. Now, with the switch points all the way over to one side or the other. In this case, got it over here to the left and the slide switch to match. I'm going to mark where I need to bend this again. And we're going to bend that back at a 90 degree angle to this this uh first bend up here. About a quarter inch to work with. Now, this end goes to the hole in the slide switch and the uh little end goes in the turnout throw bar. Again, making sure that both are positioned on the same side. And now I can simply move the slide switch back and forth to change the position of the points. That's not the best part. The best part is that now I can take that brown wire coming from the frog and solder it onto one of these center terminals. Only need the terminals on one side of the switch. I can ignore the other side. So the frog wire gets soldered to the center one and then the outer terminals go to the different wires of the DCC bus. And so when you throw the slide switch and move the points, it automatically routes the power to the frog. Now to connect all of those feeder wires to the wiring bus, I'm going to be using these Scotch lock connectors. And let me just give you a quick demo here how that works. This fits over your 14 gauge wire. Make sure it's all the way inside. And then you thread those feeders in through here, the 20 22 gauge feeders, and then you take a pair of pliers, and you crimp this down just like that. Then this little lid comes over the top, locks into place. That's why they're called suitcase connectors because it's it's like a little suitcase. That's all there is to it. Fast and easy. Well, I've got the slide switches installed on four of the five turnouts. You can see on this one up here, had to add a little bit of extra ho scale real estate to the uh to the subroad bed to have a place to uh attach that slide switch. And I've also found some small brass screws to uh hold these slide switches in place so they don't move around. And their little slots there. Another thing you can do is if um you have a problem with this wire popping out of the turnout throw bar, which does sometimes happen, you can do what I did and just put a little little spot of epoxy on there. And that should hold that in there just fine. And now I want to drop some feeder wires down from each of these sections of flex track down to that DCC bus. And for that, I've got some 22 gauge wire. So, I've got a 764s bit in my drill, which is uh really close to the same diameter as this wire. And I'm going to go in and put holes on either side of the pieces of flex track. Try to fit it right in between the ties there. This is some solid core wire. And I like to strip off about half an inch of the insulation. This 22 AWG wire is a little bit heavier than what I've used in the past for these DCC feeders, but um I find that it works better with the suitcase connectors. And I believe the heavier gauge wire will do a better job carrying that DCC signal to the locomotives. We just push that down through. Then I want to make a little bend in the wire like that and use the tension of the wire to hold it up here in the in the rail webbing, you know, right in the middle of that that eye shape of the rail. And I can just hit each side with a little bit of this 60/40 rosin core lead solder. And we pull that wire down from below. And most of that insulation is going to disappear down below the road bed. And the rest will be hidden with paint and ballast, that kind of thing. And now those get hooked up to the DCC bus with those handy dandy Scotch lock suitcase connectors. No stripping wires, no soldering. Just crimp it, lock it, and you're done. Honestly, don't know how I got by for so long without these things. And now every other individual piece of flex track that I put in between these turnouts will get the exact same treatment. And that way every square inch of track on here will have full electrical power and full DCC signal going to it. And we won't have to rely on things like, you know, rail joiners and other connections to to carry that current and to carry that signal through. Now, there's just one more set of connections that I need to make, and that's for those other wires coming out of the turnout. We already hooked up the frogs, but there are two other wires from each turnout that route power to the guard rails and the points and and things like that. And even though they're colorcoded, it's not quite as easy as hooking up the red to the red wire and the black to the black wire. Uh the way Allan has set it up, uh the straight track uh is the yellow wire and the divergent is red. So that's actually going to change depending on whether it's a right or left turnout or which direction it's facing on the layout. Where it hooks up to the DCC bus, which wire it hooks up to is going to change depending on that. And so I've drawn myself a little wiring diagram. crude, I know. But, uh, this will help my, uh, limited lizard brain figure this all out. Make sure I get it hooked up without any short circuits. Let's see. Let's cross over. The red wire from this turnout connects to the yellow wire from this turnout. And then both of those connect to the red wire on the DCC bus. And then vice versa for the black wire. Oh, yeah. We're getting a real bird's nest now. And something similar down on this end. And that is the last connection for this part of the layout. Nothing left to do now except to uh clean the track and uh put a locomotive on there. See how it runs. I've got Blackstone C19 number 345 up here on the track. Got my NCE power cab plugged in and ready to go. All booted up number 345 up here in the LCD screen. I think we'll uh just give it a simple forward and reverse to see how we uh how we roll through these turnouts. Now we'll switch over to the other track. Yeah, we go through there. [Laughter] Oh, I love it when a plan comes together. now. I'll flip the switches for the crossover. Let's see how she handles that Nice. So nice. [Laughter] [Music] [Music] Well, everything works the the way it's supposed to. And I call that a win any day of the week. And I just got to say that I am super impressed with the quality and attention to detail that Alan Noazo puts into these customuilt turnouts. And remember, you can get other things besides H3. Check out his website over at empire-trackworks.com for all the different scales and configurations he has available. And if you don't see what you want, contact him directly and chances are he can make it happen for you. But that's going to wrap it up for this week. I want to thank you all so much for watching today. And you know, I'm going to be back next week with another project for the OM30 Goldfield and Calico layout. So, I hope you're subscribed with those notifications turned on so you won't miss that. And in the meantime, you can also follow Thunder Mesa for free on Patreon. That's patreon.com/thundermesa or on Instagram at thunder.ma. And check out the resources available on the ThunderMesa Studio website at thunder meesa.studio. As always, a huge thank you to our Patreon members who help to make these projects and these videos possible. Till next time, keep moving forward everybody. Adios for now. [Music]