Upgrade at R.M.O. Electric

Greetings followers of the Atlantic Pacific Railroad and my blog!

The railroad is always evolving and changing. Over the years I've added many industries, signals, track and more. One thing I am very proud of is the running of trains with no track issues. As many have stated 'Neal's track work is bullet proof!'. While trains do run well, there's always room for improvement.

One area that has bothered me for a while are the two Peco switches that come off the Rock Ridge secondary track that feed into R.M.O. Electric. Due to the tracks on either side of the power plant, I did need to use curved switches. They come off the Atlas #4 switches from the secondary track. When the tracks were installed, the only ones available were from Peco. They make great switches in code 70, 80 and code 100 for HO scale. Their switch machines are compact and pack a wallop! I have them in the Tropicana industrial area as well as the tracks leading to the Reynolds Intermodal Terminal. 

This year, Atlas has rolled out their code 100 curved switches. They're quite large, and look like in size to a #8 switch. The radius off both the normal route is 30" radius and the diverging route is 22" Compared to the Peco which is 60" on the normal route and 30" on the diverging route. 

This is the Peco switch. It is smaller in size to the Atlas.

Here's the new Atlas Curved Switch

Here's what the Peco switched looked like installed in the power plant area. 

Here's what the area looks like with the new Atlas curved switches installed. One thing I had to do to these switches was to flip the switch drawbar due to the limited space. Using a small head flat screwdriver, I popped out the plastic rivets, revered the bar, and pushed the rivets back into place. 

So why the change? While the GE 44 Tonner engine performs well, some of the larger freight cars did not perform so well as the curve off the normal route had to be brought in closer to the area. In real life, this would probably have the wheels squealing through a curve, similar to what some of the NYCTA Subway cars would go through at the end of the line at South Ferry / Whitehall St. 

Here's a link to both see and here what it would sound like in real life South Ferry Loop

The shorter coal cars have no issues going thru the Peco, but the 100 ton coal cars at times experienced an issue. In addition, the only engine that could work the plant was the GE 44 Tonner. Now I can use any SW unit if there's an issue with the 44T. 

The Peco were manual switches on the railroad and the new Atlas are as well. They may get powered up down the road. 

Thanks for reading and stop back often for more updates!