A question for modelers with more experience. I am contemplating an extreme mountain railroad. Common sense etc. says I should stick to about a 2% grade. But this is going to be a mountain road! What are the steepest grades any of you have successfully modeled? My mountain will be "N" scale, DCC, code 55, running passenger trains of about 8 cars with 2 engines, and short freight. A12 car coal train would be typical. To keep it interesting helpers will be needed for OPS.

Thanks

Steve

I am having great difficulty using MicroEngineering N-Scale Code 55 insulated rail joiners.  They do not have slots that will attach to the bottom of the rail.  They just slip on and fall off just as easily.  Is there a trick to using these things that I'm missing?  Maybe a little CA would be the answer?  Any suggestions are most welcome.

Doug

Guys, for my layout, at least initially, I will be mixing a combination of Walthers code 83 and Atlas code 83 track. I know some someone must have used this combination at one time or another. My question is which rail joiner to use? Or what modification might need to be made. The Atlas joiner seems rather large and loose fitting while the Walthers joiner is smaller and very tight fitting.

Well this week I decided to try my hand at building turnouts using Joe's CVT/PC tie technique.

To begin I printed templates of the turnouts I want to build.  I printed the picture of the CV Tie Strip with the ties replaced with PC ties.  This was the first pitfall I encountered.  I started to modify a tie strip for my jig when it occurred to me that while Joe's example was a #6 turnout, I'm building #5's!  Stop the presses!