The Randall Museum in San Francisco hosts a large HO-scale model model railroad. Created by the Golden Gate Model Railroad Club starting in 1961, the layout was donated to the Museum in 2015. Since then I have started automatizing trains running on the layout. I am also the model railroad maintainer. This blog describes various updates on the Randall project and I maintain a separate blog for all my electronics not directly related to Randall.
2021-11-16 - Mainline T330 at Sonora
Category RandallSpeaking of disasters waiting to happen, this is the mainline track at T330 Sonora:
What we can observe here is that both rails from the turnout lead are not soldered to the mainline track anymore. There’s some remnant of solder, thus I’ll venture a guess they used to be joined. Moreover the track lifts by about half a millimeter and can flex up and down freely. It’s amazing we don’t derail here. And that’s the mainline where every single train runs..