Triplex on the move

Well, I finally get the Triplex 2-8-8-8-2 rolling! A friend from work had an MTH power supply and controller tucked under his layout and passed it over to me when he found out I was dragging my feet on getting this baby rolling. He said that I'd really love seeing this big guy rolling and he was right - it's a really fantastic machine.

Funny - I wasn't familiar with the system, so I spent a while banging my head against the wall trying to get this guy to just...move. hehehe  I wasn't aware of the "NEUTRAL"  mode and having to switch out of it to get it going. But, once we got it down a bit, it was a lot of fun.

The big thing right now is just getting the track and curves. The radius curve for this is HUGE and I'm not 100% sure where I'll be able to set up for running. For now, I have 18 feet of track I can play with this one and I have to say...it's still a load of fun.

My 5 year old had a fantastic time running it as well. Once I get more track and I can let her loose a bit more (I won't have to worry about the thing flying headlong into the wall!) I'll feel a bit better about letting her go on the controls. :)

What I need to find is some estate sale where they are trying to unload a bunch of Lionel track! hehe

2-8-8-8-2 Triplex in O scale from Malcolm Johnson on Vimeo.


I found this info on http://www.trainz.com/t-fastrack_guide.aspx

O72--16 sections to a circle (#12041).  One section makes a 22.5 degree turn.  Each half section (#12055) make a 11.25 degree turn.

Note that O36, O60, O72 and O84 track sections are made where multiples of 8 make a full circle, which makes it easy to make these circles symmetrical and work together on a layout.  This is because the curved sections are all made to where they are either 1/8 of a circle (45 degrees), 1/16 of a circle (22.5 degrees), or 1/32 of a circle (11.25 degrees).  However, O48 is made where it takes 12 sections to make a circle (30 degrees). This makes it a bit of a challenge to make O48 work in a layout using multiple curve diameters, because the angle of the curves does not match the other curve sections when making partial turns.