I'm new to trackwork and I'm sure the following has been tackled a hundred different ways but thought I'd share the following. Hopefully I'll also see what others have done. On my test layout I wanted to be able to control the power to some of the sidings individually so I could turn the power to the siding on/off. Of course that meant the siding electrically had to be isolated from the main. I started by isolating the siding track with insulated rail joiners that have flex in them. Worked pretty well on the first and second one where the track coming off a turnout was either straight or had a fairly large radius. Then moving on to some turnouts where the radius coming off of them was a tight radius the rail joiners seemed to be too flexible for the situation. I was having problems with maintaining a smooth transition between the turnout and the track off of it at the isolation point where the insulating rail joiner was. The joiners flexed and gave too much. I've made all of my turnouts using PCB ties and thought that PCB ties might be a solution . I came up with the following and after installing a couple I'm happy with them at this point. I had the fixture above so used it but you could tape the PCB ties to a piece of paper or other surface. . . . . . . . Above I'm in the process of wiring 5 DPDT switches to the 5 sidings that can be isolated from the main. To the right of those is the panel that can switch the layout between DC and DCC. There is also a toggle switch that where if the near track is in the DCC mode it can be switched to the program track at any time. That function has been really handy. With a loco on the track with a decoder the track can be the program track. Flip the switch and you can immediately test out the change you just made on this length of track or run it out on the main if you need more track length. How are you handling isolating tracks on sharper radius's? You can also find the above on my web site ( HERE ). Sumner
