Five Clinton Turnouts for Arrival / Departure Tracks

Spent the last week working on these five turnouts leading into the 2 arrival / departure tracks of the Clinton / Proviso yard. The two left hand tracks are the A/D tracks while the third track on the right will be a yard bypass track. The trackwork is designed to allow access to both tracks from both the yard ladder (lower right track) and the mainline lead (lower center track). Still have wiring to do. I hope to have that completed before labor day weekend. These five turnout raises the total to 53 completed out of 108 total.

The location of the turnouts on the layout are indicated in the track schematice below.

Turnouts 47 and 48 (out of 108 total)

Well, I'm closing in on the halfway point in building turnouts for the Geneva Subdivision. I finished two more for 47 & 48 and now only have 60 left to do. Six more and I will have officially hit the halfway point. I have to admit that building the mainline and staging yard turnouts was a little more rewarding since each time I got a couple done, it meant that I could extend the mainline that much further or add more trains to the layout. Now, with the mainline and staging yards complete, I am focusing my attention on the yards. There are so many yard turnouts one right next to the other. If you get two done, it just means you got two more to do right next to the two you just finished. As you can probably tell, I've fallen into the habit of building and installing two turnouts at a time. I think it was doing all the crossovers on the mainline that got me into that pattern. Anyway, I am forging ahead with Proviso/Clinton turnouts. My immediate goal is to get enough installed so that there can be some semblance of operations. This would require complete arrival and departure tracks, at least 4 or 5 yard tracks and 1 or 2 engine engine tracks. To get to this point, 15 to 20 more turnouts need to be constructed. At the rate of 2 turnouts a week, I should be at this point by Thanksgiving. Well enough bloviating. Back to constructing turnouts.

East Staging at Nelson Completed

Got the east staging yard at Nelson completed over the weekend. The east staging yard contains 5 tracks as opposed to only 4 for the west staging yard at Proviso/Clinton. As with the west yard, control of the turnouts is through a push button for each of the tracks that, when pushed, has all the turnouts properly set for a train to enter or leave that track. So far I'm at 44 turnouts installed. Six more and I'll be at the half way point. I only have three tortoises left from the Rochelle Sub layout. I'll have to order a 12 pack from MB Klien real soon. I think I will now focus my attention on the Proviso/Clinton Yard.