I've completed about 75% of the roadbed fitting and I'm happy to report that I'm just going to make it with the Flexibed that I bought. Since it comes in quantities of 12 strips, I ended up with enough extra to do the whole job.
I also redid the artwork for the control panel. I now have 26 switches and therefore have used up all the letters in the alphabet, which obviously means I can never again buy any more switched. Yeah... right... like that's ever going to happen.
I've got one area that's bugging me. The crossing in the center of the layout has a slight kink on the track that goes north and south. If I rotate the crossing to straighten it, the East-West track gets the same kink. There's something amiss in the geometry and I can't seem to find out where it is. I think I'll power up just that section of track and run several different locos through the area to see if anything derails. If they track through it, I won't worry about it. If they have a problem, I'm going to have to trace back from this point to see where I can add or remove some track to straighten the approach.
The toggle switches still represent cab-control switches for each insulated block. Depending on when I purchase all the digital equipment, I may not need all those DPDT switches. I would just need them for the yard tracks that I'd want to isolate. Question: if you use Z4k tracks with the latest DCS, can you isolate sections with toggle switches?
By the end of the weekend I should be ready to start gluing roadbed and track in place. I can't wait to run trains on this thing.
