Whenever planning electrical gaps on my layout I have always tried to have those occur on straight sections of track. However, on the current layout I'm building I have one or two spots where I would like to have an electrical gap on a curve, including one on a hidden helix. Normally on curves I solder my metal rail joiners so I have a nice smooth rail with no kinks. I'm worried that the plastic rail joiner I use at electrical gaps won't be strong enough to keep the curved rail aligned properly.

Apparently I made a mistake buying this piece. I wanted to connect my outer oval mainline to my inner figure eight mainline to give my train a longer run. I was under the impression I could plug it in and go because I'd read how Kato Unitrack turnouts feed power the direction the turnout is thrown but apparently this piece is insolated so when my train gets to the crossover, it stops dead in its tracks.

I plan to have 5 staging tracks in the hidden mainline return loops at both ends of my (long) loop-to-loop layout.  I want to have occupancy indicators for each of the staging tracks as well as the mainline loop and turnout ladders.  At this point my plan is to use current detection occupancy detectors. I will be using Digitrax DCC components for the overall DCC control.  I want to have LED indicator lights on the fascia for the occupancy zones.

Is current detection the best method for occupancy detection for my usage case? (Hidden staging)

Please let me know if this is a reasonable path to upgrade everything to DCC.  It can be altered at any point.

 My eventual target is "dead rail" DCC, powering the locos with batteries.  That is too ambitious at the start. 

Here is the starting point: