Eric's O-Scale Railroading Journal

Well, I now have a new project to work on…as if I didn’t have enough already. When I started building the tunnels on my layout, I built them to handle the largest engines and cars that I had at the time. I’ve since added a big articulated steam engine to my roster and it has trouble getting through most of the tunnels. Right now I can only run it on the middle loop in the main room. The good news is that the tunnels themselves are really not the problem. Rather, it’s the tunnel portals that are the culprit. Most of my tunnels are on curves and the portals just aren’t wide enough to accommodate the huge overhang oft the articulated steamers. For this reason, I’m going to be widening any of the tunnel portals on the layout that are on curves (which is most of them). This will be a long term project so it might be a year or more before everything is completely fixed. It’s not a huge priority because it only effects 1 of my engines….but in the long run I’d like to able to run that engine and other articulated engines on the main loop one of these days.