Joe,

I complement you on you work on this book Make It Run Like a Dream. There are some real jewels in it. Some of what was there I knew from past experience or having seen elsewhere. You did say that this was a compilation of material and knowledge that heretofore had not been assembled in one place.

Cold weather sometimes has interesting side effects -- and exposes problems that were there all along. Recently, the big yard in my layout developed a short. The PM42 triggered, of course, and my control panel showed that the problem was in the Deseronto yard area. I took everything off the track and started poking around. Nothing... checked all the turnouts, trackwork, nothing showed. Interesting thing, though. When I measured the resistance between the rails I got 84 ohms... an odd number. FInally, by isolating chunks of track and walking the line with my ohm meter -- I found it.

Having watched a few videos on hand laying turnouts, a question / suggestion occurs. Instead of positioning all the parts and then transferring solder to the joint with the iron ( not the "preferred" method of soldering), why not tin everything before positioning and then just reflow the joints with a hot iron? I haven't tried it, but it seems it would result in better joints requiring less cleanup.

Why would someone build a yard ladder like this with several s-curves?

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekB-t2sgkag

at 3:40.