One of the layouts I operate on is Ed Petry’s Sierra Railroad. He has now started the last portion of building the Sierra and all its interchanges in the hills of Northern California by building the Westside Lumber Company. It will stretch from Tuolumne up to camp 45.

In the busy Mill town of Tuolumne, California, the Sierra and WSLCo. had some shared trackage. There was some dual gauge tracks for serving the mill and loading cars of lumber. Both railroads had Wyes to turn power. The WSLCo. Wye actually ran thru the Sierra line heading to the mill and the dual gauge.

Ed asked me to use my skills and my handy Fast Track tools to build this diamond. I wanted a new challenge and had never built a foot of narrow gauge track, so I said yes. He armed me with code 70 rail and some Hon3 gauges. I picked up a NMRA Hon3 gauge since I was also tasked to build a #4 wye turnout for the narrow gauge at the apex of the wye.

Now, most people familiar with building track the Fast Track way would think was very attainable project. The kicker, or biggest issue would be the wiring. I was not just tasked with wiring up a crossing and a turnout for DCC. That would involve a couple of Tam Valley Frog Juicers and some cutting of gaps and testing with an Ohm meter.

The electronic issue was that the Sierra is controlled by Rail-Command, an analog version of command control. The new Westside Lumber Co. narrow gauge will be operated by an Easy DCC system. Two totally separate power supplies and two separate problems. A Frog Juicer and an AR1 was not going to help us out here.

I set about building the crossing, or diamond, as per the Tim Warris method of notching the rails that crossed either on the top, or bottom. Making them fit like a puzzle piece and making the crossing out of just eight pieces of rail.

I did not have any photos of the crossing at the time, but a call out to the great members of the Sierra Yahoo Group yielded some great results. Here is a map of the track layout in Toulomne and you can see the WSLCo wye in the upper right. Next is a photo of the actual crossing with the standard gauge going right thru the tail track. Map by Bob Carlson in book, Last of the Three Footers. Photo by Bruce Bectold.

Now, building the model.

I had a large piece of paper and used actual track on Ed’s layout to draw the track diagram. I started with the standard gauge, as I knew how that should look and I had my track gauges all set. I then added the narrow gauge tail track, and placed a print out of a #4 wye Hon3 turnout from the fast Tracks library next to me crossing.

First just rails,no guard rails.

Oh, and I also found out both tracks are curved. Lucky me.

I built the crossing and added the wye turnout. I laid out PC ties for the diamond and set about making the standard gauge. I then marked where the narrow gauge would go and notched the rail, so the narrow gauge would fit over the standard gauge like a puzzle piece. I did the same for the guardrails. As complicated as all this looks, it is actually only eight pieces of rail.

Narrow gauge guardrails first. Then with all the guard rails installed and gaps cut and filed down.

Size comparison. Sierra Modern Boxcar vs. Westside flat.

Now onto the electrical puzzle.

I drew up some diagrams to help keep my thoughts in line.

I then had to gap the diamond and after deciding that a power would have to be done with a hand selector, or operator controlled switch, I gapped all four frogs in the crossing and the one in the turnout.

I used Dedeco cutoff wheels for thin gaps, and then slid plastic cut from a leftover plastic poster into the gaps and used Cy-Poxy to adhere them to the rails. It was about .010 styrene size.  I then cut and filed them down to size. The red marks are where I need to cut gaps for isolation of power between rails.

I then had to find a switch that could alternate power supplies to the rails. I also had to design which frog went to which power supply, are we all still following? I hope so.

Next I pre wired the frogs.

I found the Quad Pole-Double Throw switch. (Angels singing…… or my lovely wife was practicing karaoke)

I labeled each frog as a North (N) or South (S) rail and a 1 or a 2. Simple works best for me.

I made up a simple diagram to make sure I did not mix up rails.

I then color coded it for the different power routing.

See the diagram as I linked up the QPDT switch to each section. This looked like an octopus as I had long wires so we could mount the switch in a convenient location in the layout fascia.

When using the standard gauge, you will power those rails, when turning a loco on the narrow gauge wye, you must power those rails choosing the easy DCC system.

I brought the track over at the next operating session and as of this writing it is installed.

Ed then installed it in place and it operates as planned. The bad news is that he is going to change over from rail Command to all easy DCC, so the wiring process could have been altered…..sigh.

Here is Ed running Toulomne and the crossing is to the right. The big building is one of his scratch built mill buildings. This is a fun layout.

Hope you enjoyed and now off to scratch build a SP depot, since the NG&SL gazette published plans for the SP depot in Oakdale. Good thing I am going for more NMRA AP certificates.

Thomas Gasior