A yard isn’t much of a yard without spots for locomotive maintenance, storage, and refueling. In my yard, those tracks have been nick-named the “interior yard track.” These interior tracks will be the last track laid on the layout until it is time to begin the second half. Funnily enough, they were the first pieces added to the original track plan in SCARM more than a year ago now.

In time, there will be 4 main tracks that make up the interior track – a refueling siding, a run-through to reach the turntable, a storage siding, and the shop track.

I do not currently have enough track to set up the entirety of the interior tracks, so I focused on the turntable run-through and the refueling siding. The storage siding and shop track can wait.

I started by laying approximately a foot of cork roadbed branching off the ladder, and attacking it with a Dremel to even it out to the surface of the foam. This is because I want the interior track to sit on the foam, instead of on cork.

Next, I installed the switch that splits the run-through and the refueling siding. This was done in a similar manner as with my other switch. Just 2 small drops of glue, one under the end of the switch and the other beneath the frog.

The refueling siding was the next track to go down. This was a full-length section of Atlas Code 80 flex track. I used a ruler to get it almost perfectly straight.

The turntable run-through proved to be slightly more challenging, but only slightly. I needed to clip the rails to the perfect length so the rails didn’t collide with the rails of the turntable bridge, and also that the gap between the rails wasn’t too large. This was made a little harder by the fact there needed to be a very slight curve in this track.

Both of these tracks have their own feeders attached, and in time I will cut isolating gaps into the tracks using a Dremel and wire in cut-off switches. This will be necessary for DC operation in the coming months, until I am able to upgrade fully to DCC.

I then started laying the whisker tracks for the turntable, but that will have to wait for the post talking about the turntable itself.

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