r/TTRAK

I am at the beach -- and my modules are at home -- I can't work on my layout -- but I have been thinking about my 1st experience with T-TRAK -- minimal as that experience is.

Just to be very clear about just how minimal -- I built 4 (HO scale) corner models and have been running my Piko NCTD Sprinter around the circle with my TCS CS-105 Command Station and a UWT-100 Throttle.

Two main thoughts:

1. Because I can build a layout -- the beginning of a layout -- using T-TRAK modules, I can have a layout. I do not have enough permanent space for a layout -- I look with envy on people who have a spare room. I have a house that I like quite a lot -- but it is a 3 bedroom 2.5 bath house in the the South. That means no basement and no attic for you non-southerners.

I have a two car garage, but it's also a workshop with a table saw and chop saw on a stand and drill press and myriad strollers and toys for when the grandkids come to visit -- and bike and tools for bikes for myself and my wife.

We are empty nesters -- but our children live out of town -- which man 3-4 times a year, every bedroom is occupied -- if not bursting at the seams.

That means no space for a permanent layout -- but I can set up an 8' x 5' layout -- maybe up tp a 10' x 5' layout on folding tables in garage, as long as I can take it down if a project that requires the table saw comes up.

I can set it up -- barely -- in the living room so long as I take it down when my wife want to host a bridal shower or a baby shower.

It is very nice to have even a nascent layout -- I had not thought that possible!

2. Because some people had condense there experience into Standard and Recommended Practices -- mostly those listed in this subreddit's wiki -- I pushed the 4 modules together, set the Sprinter on the track -- and everything just ran.

I am fudging a bit -- one the first circuit, I discovered that one track on eh red track had slid below the Unijoiner and I had to pull that joint between the modules apart and re-align.

I call that zero debug time, and that was very satisfying -- no mechanical or electrical issues.

It was less than couple of minutes from when I put the Sprinter on the track until I was playing with DCC -- my first experience -- and figuring out how get the various announcements to play.

I understand that setting up what is essentially a circle of track and having it prove mechanically and electrically reliable is not a huge technical accomplishment or feat.

But because T-TRAK is truly modular -- the only connections to any subsequent modules are the track ends and the PowerPole connectors that connect a new section of power bus -- I have a great deal of confidence that the layout will be remain that reliable.

My 4 year old grandson and his 1½ sister could run the train around and around -- tooting the horn, ringing the bell, turning the headlight on an off -- with no derailaments or dead sections of track -- just steady running. One of my son's high school buddies brought his daughter over, and she was mesmerized -- running the train around and around for probably an hour while we played in the driveway.

No issues.

As you can no doubt tell, I am very pumped up by all this.

I can't wait for my set of double modules to be delivered, so I can run on the red track and the yellow track. :-)

The structure kits are piling up.

This has all been a pretty wonderful experience.

I asked last week about a base that would bring Walthers Concrete streets to track level for my modules.

I am modeling an urban environment, where the street crossings will be level -- I think of the humped up street crossings I see in man modules -- and in "train hitting stuck 18 wheeler" videos as distinctly rural.

In the first photograph, the track is level with the crown of the road -- in the second picture, the track in on the side of the road, and the track is a little bit higher than the road. I can't tell by how much, but you can see a little daylight.

My sense is that the rail being a little higher than the road at the edge of the road is gong to be an eyesore.

Anyone have experience with this?