New Addition To My Operating Sessions

Hello everyone! Welcome to another update to my layout! 

This update involves adding some track to an existing industry (yes, you may think I'm nuts). I saw an opportunity to add another siding to Mike's Lumber. Current track to the lumber yard comes off the Little Jamaica secondary. It can handle 4-5 cars, depending on the length of the car used. In the past, I had 72' center beam cars. If you saw my last blog post, I am sending the railroad back in time to an era that covers the 60's to the late 80's. 

I picked up a number of 60' Bulkhead flat cars at a good price when Walthers had a sale. Then I found a trio of Penn Central 53' GSC Bulkhead flat cars online. Both of these will be used in my virtual ops as well as when I host my operating sessions.

I saw an area where I could add an additional track without ripping out too much existing track and add some additional switching moves to any session. 

The new turnout sits opposite the turnout that goes into C&P Restaurant Supply. Coming off the switch is a section of 24" radius track...

I added about 14" of straight track to see how it would work...

With the addition of the track and cork, this is how it came out. In addition, I went out and bought a forklift made by a company called Artitec on Evilbay since none of the dealers they listed had any...

Below is a video of the newly installed track at Mike's Lumber...

I had to change the couplers on these cars. While they have Proto metal couplers, they didn't swing enough in the coupler pocket and the cars were derailing on the 24" curve. Why I don't know, so I added Kadee #146 long shank couplers. Once the change was made, there were no issues spotting the cars. 

That's all for now. I have no plans to add more track to the railroad (I've said that before), and this new addition should be fun to switch.

Thanks for reading!