Invasive Surgery

I screwed up. Big time. As robust as Rokuhan track is, it's not designed to be ballasted. And in spite of my most careful measures to avoid fouling the switches, I managed to "brick" one of them. As bad luck would have it, the switch is right under the delicate wooden truss bridge, making it highly difficult and risky to attempt any corrective measures from above.

Repair, however, was the only option; given that all of the track is soldered together and permanently bonded to the base, it's quite impossible to replace the switch—or any piece the track, for that matter. But how would one go about making repairs?

The answer: open up the underside of the layout. Thankfully, if there was any good news in this disaster, it's that the only thing separating the bottom of the switch from the outside world was an inch of Gatorfoam. A sharp knife would provide complete access to the switch—and even allow it to be dismantled, serviced and reassembled. And so, just like its builder, the Z Scale Gorre & Daphetid required some invasive surgery!

The first step was to plot out the incision on the bottom of the layout—not a familiar perspective (below). The incision required the removal of one of the large felt feet, and doing so tore the woodgrain covering. No matter; this is simply vinyl shelf covering material, which will be completely replaced later.

Once the outermost layer of Gatorfoam was removed, cutting had to proceed very carefully, as the layout's wiring is embedded into the upper surface of the Gatorfoam, so the process was akin to what surgeons must do to avoid cutting veins and nerves. Slowly but surely, the underside of the switch was exposed. It was tedious, but relatively straightforward, because I had not applied any adhesive to the underside of the switches when I laid the track.

It wasn't long before I was able to remove the cover plate from the bottom of the switch. Once inside, I carefully dismantled the mechanism, and eventually determined the cause of the failure: alcohol and ballast bonding agent had seeped in through the openings where spring contacts provide track power from the PC board to the rails.

It looked worse than it really was, because the alcohol dissolved and drew in some Sharpie ink. Corrective measures involved saturating all of the parts with alcohol and scrubbing them until they were spotlessly clean, which took longer than everything else combined, since it entailed removing and cleaning all of the tiny conductive springs, PC board, switch contacts, slider bar, coil, etcetera, all in situ. Naturally, this was followed by reassembly and testing.

This was certainly not something that could have been accomplished from above, least of all with absolutely no cosmetic evidence that anything was done (above is an "after" image, which is identical to the "before" image). The irony is that, at the outset of the project, I'd contemplated cutting access holes for all of the switches, and fitting them with removable covers; I should have followed through with that thought. Still, it wasn't terribly difficult performing this surgery, and now that it's done, I'm reasonably confident that access will not be required again, since there's no more ballasting to be done.

So, while the patient required major surgery, it has fully recovered and is functioning normally, with a good prognosis for a long, healthy life ahead. Me? Curiously, I'm scheduled for an almost identical procedure tomorrow: arthroscopic surgery with some possible cleaning measures. The difference is that I'll be off my feet for a couple of weeks afterward. The timing is rotten, but I don't think the timing for surgery is ever really "good." At least I should still be able to work a little on the G&D; perhaps I'll try to wrap up the wooden trestle design, since that's mostly computer work. We'll see!

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