Where the HELL have I been?

Doing this.

I have my dad's old Lionel trains. And, sadly, the electrical skills of a pole dancer.

Bad combination.

This is the beginning of my fourth and newest layout. It doesn't look like much yet, but it will. And I'm not actually using much Lionel stuff. My dad's trains are indeed Lionel, but in the last 50 years, dozens of other toy train companies have cropped up. And a lot of them make really nice stuff. MTH is one of them, and their track is what I'm using. It has the roadbed, or 'ballast' as they call it, built in already. If you've ever set your own ballast by hand, and many people have, you know that root canal is more pleasant.

So far, what I have succeeded in doing is to create two separate loops (an outer 054, partially elevated loop, and a smaller 042 figure-eight over and under inner loop that connect together via four switches). Essentially, it means I can operate two long passenger trains independently and simultaneously. And when just one train is in operation, it can switch loops regardless of the loop it's on or the direction it's going.

In theory, anyway. As is par for the way I do anything, there are complications. I was hoping to be able to watch both trains pass each other at full speed while I sat there sipping a Daquiri from across the apartment. And if I had the space, skill, time, and money, I could do it. Unfortunately, because of the steepness of the elevations, the train struggles to go uphill until I give it more juice. And then when it's at the top of the elevation, it takes off and begins to barrel down the hill way too fast. To avoid a trainwreck, I have to slow it down and speed it up depending on where it is on the layout. And this goes for the other loop as well. It makes it difficult to operate both trains at once sans stress, because I'm constantly having to monitor when each of the trains is in danger of derailing. I have heard that someone makes a computer chip/sensor, kind of like a capacitor, that senses when the train is in an elevated state and when it's completely horizontal. So it knows when to adjust the juice. I have to look into it. In the meantime, I have banked the curves on the downhills a few degrees, kind of like how the pavement is banked at an auto racetrack, to cut down on the centrifugal force that will pull it off the track. The locomotives are quite heavy- some are more than 10 pounds, and will do some serious damage to anything in their way. Wow, I'm really a nerd.

Mountains are on their way. I secured two of the four tunnel portals to their bases today, since two of the four portals enter the mountain from an elevated position. I'm waiting for some crossing signals and gates (with sound!) so I can pull some more of my hair out trying to figure out how to hook them up. Meanwhile, I've stuffed the table (it's 12 feet by 5 feet) with as many buildings as will look real in that space.

So that's what I've been doing since February. One of my three main goals for the summer is to finish this thing already. If you have any skills in hooking up switches, block signals, etc. I could really use the help. And if you have some pole dancing skills that you want to show me , that's okay too.