Peter's Model Railroading | The Layout | Operations
Operations #1
July 2023
Granted, operations on a two-foot wide module is limited, but not impossible. So, here is a video (hand-held cellphone) of me moving my S-Helper Service NW2 back and forth on one of the tracks of the module. You'll hear the clicking of the change-of-direction of the throttle. This is a battery-powered engine, so no wiring used. It is difficult to hold the cellphone and the throttle at the same time, while making sure that the engine doesn't run off of the ends of the module. So, while not great, it is something. Lighting isn't great either. I hope to eventually be able to take better quality videos.
June 2025
Previously, when I had just the one module parked over top of my office desk, I needed some track to be able to test and program locomotives. Since flextrack comes in 3-foot pieces and since my modules are two feet wide, I had a bunch of ~1-foot pieces of flextrack left over. I had an approximate 6-foot board of plywood in the garage, so I glued 6 of those pieces of flextrack to the board, so that I'd have a bit of a test track. Well, now that we are over a year later, and I have a dedicated space for my layout, I don't really need that board anymore, but I'd still like to run and test my engines and cars. So, I cut that 6-foot board in half and placed one on either side of the one finished module I have right now. This allows me to run a short train in and out of the scene I am modeling.
The 3-foot boards are supported by two small pieces of plywood that I glued to their bottoms. I purposely made them slightly shorter than needed so that I could use 3x5 notecards to slightly raise them up. They are not connected to the module, just pushed against the track that I want to run. I can then move the board with a train to "switch" it to another track.
While extremely simple, this is a good way just to run a train when you simply don't have the space to run a long train, or a full layout.