Rebuilding North Albany Yard (Staging yard)

Once I had my MMR Civil certificate in hand, I could finally begin the process of rebuilding the fourth section of my layout. Certain things had to go: the turntable, the storage tracks, and the switchback lead. Some things were going to stay, such as three of the yard tracks. In the process, I decided to flip the last switch around and create a fourth yard track. They aren't very long, but this isn't really supposed to serve as an active staging yard. If anything, it is just a place to keep train cars on the layout so I don't have to walk across the basement to dig them out of storage boxes.

I first began by cutting all of the unnecessary wires underneath and disassembling everything. I had anticipated this day would come so I didn't secure them very well and they came apart easily. I made sure to keep all of the wiring as I seem to run out of it just when the stores close. I discovered that my lightly-glued down tracks were actually securely glued down and took some effort to remove. The cork roadbed which had been secured with wood glue was a real bear to take out and I had to use a utility knife to slice it into small pieces and then gouge it away with a putty knife and chisel. Elmers glue probably would have been easier.

Beads indicate where to add feeder wires

The yard itself was laid on craft foam sheets that I purchased at a hobby store. Originally I was pleased with them because they laid relatively flat (unlike sheet cork) and they were cheap. But, over time they bubbled and created undulations in the tracks. This made the yard look somewhat realistic so I didn't mind it at first, but in relaying the track I had trouble with the track joints because securing the track to the foam wasn't good enough. So, I shimmed the foam bubble areas with styrene that I spiked down to the plywood and then glued the track to the shims. Those areas are now secure. In the future, I will switch back to cork roadbed or sheet or just lay the track on the plywood.

When I originally wired the section I set it up so each of the yard tracks could be turned on and off with a switch (an Atlas selector). I didn't really care about that feature anymore, so I wired all of the yard tracks together to the DCC bus line. In the future if I want to add it back in it is easy to cut the wires below as they are neatly arranged. However, in a concession to my partial laziness I did also glue down a small separate pieces flex track next to the yard. It isn't connected by rail to the rest of the layout nor is it wired up. It sort of looks like a partially ripped up yard track. But, I can physically put a second engine there when I want to have two on the layout and it won't run off on my or have its sound effects drone on.

After everything was wired up, I painted the track with the usual Rustoleum camoflauge paint and then scraped the railheads clean. The ground throws were connected with the wire-in-tube method as I did elsewhere.