Turnout replacement & track realignment

Ever since my last operational session, I wanted to replace the turnout into Old Dominion Foods and realign the Virginia Central trackage.  Well I got that going last week sort of.  The taking out of the turnouts was easy.  Both areas were ballasted in.  Warm water with some Dawn dish detergent dripped on the ballast lets the glue loose it's grip.  Then it is simply taking out the track.  I had to cut the track for the turnout into OD Foods using my Demel tool.  If you do not have one of these rotary tools, you have to get one.  Mine is a generic one I got from BJ's for $20 and came with a thousand attachments.  It's a must in track laying, or in my case track removal.

  Lets start with the VC alignment first.  This required taking out a lot more track.  I wanted this area to be more smooth to operate and a little more room in the spur trackage.  I also want to remove a turnout that was tight.  I used a Peco curved turnout to give me the most room.  I'm not total sold on it but it may look better when ballasted.

 The OD Foods turnout was a different story.  I also replaced this #4 turnout with a medium radius Peco turnout.  This spur gets mainly long mechanical reefers and they were ugly going through this turnout.  I wanted a bigger turnout to have these reefers flow into OD Foods.  It worked perfectly but I had a problem, the turnout was not DCC friendly.  So I worked on it, cut on it, and almost re-built it. I thought I had it but i did not.  I added some plastic shims to protect the frog from shorts.  I finally came to the point that I would have to put styrene in the top of the rail in the frog.  That when I said, OK I'm getting a PECO turnout that's DCC friendly.  Being totally flustered for 2 days in a row, a guy on HO- Interchange yahoo group was selling PECO DCC friendly turnouts.  A bunch of them.  He had what I needed and it's on it's way now.  The offending turnout is still in my trackage, waiting to be "ripped" out.  I got to the point where the turnout only short out when going straight through the switch.

Before shot.  Wanted to extend the spur and get rid of the turnout in the middle.

A shot from the other end.

 

New trackage in.  The curved Peco turnout gives me more options in this area.  The spur leads on the left leads to an unknown industry.  It maybe a wood chip loader.

View of the VC trackage on the other end.

The old turnout has been removed.  I believe I used a Atlas #4 turnout because it was the only one that would fit.  I mainly use #6's.

The hole is for the under the table switch machine.  I use the Atlas ones with push buttons and they work pretty good.  The Peco switch has automatic locking switch, so the switch machine will not be needed.  I covered the hole with a very thin piece of styrene.

The +$#*!@# pain in my butt turnout.  It looks good and provides smoother trackage into Old Dominion Foods.