Train Yard Status - Mar 14 2013

This morning was mostly consumed by putting a new TV stand in man cave followed by some major rail way pond rework.  For some reason my live oak tree is just now shedding a bunch of leaves as new buds are coming in, unlike the rest of the trees shedding leaves in the fall.  I guess I never noticed it years gone past. 

I put the pumps in pump cages hoping to stop their flow less often.

In the status post on mylargescale.com yesterday I got a link to a site on how to build elevated train track using PVC.  The one thing that I have in common is putting stakes in the ground to support the track.  The one thing I learned from the web site was not to put the stakes so far in that they put presure on the plastic as it could change the gauge of the track.  I had put my stakes in before reading that but I did not put them hard against the plastic anyway. Here are some shots of my temporary stablization stakes. 

The next shot has the train running over it, you will notice some blurr of the track but very little, indicating a fairly stable stake.  But allowing some movement and this was engine going over it.

 On this next shot you will note the blurr is vertical not horizontal.  This is caused by the engine putting presure on the track past this point while the lighter box cars will flex with that track. 

Here is the shot of the stakes I am using, I went to Home Depot and just got very long big nails.

Now just some fun shots of the trains running, this is what is all about. 

Got all 3 tracks up and running to the point I can walk away and leave them unattended for a few minutes, they all ran for quite sometime and so far no problems.