Possibly a daft idea...

[blackettstreet]

I had this idea.....I'm building an 8'x4' layout and I really cannot be bothered to be constantly picking up stock, having to decouple it for removal then spending ages rerailing it, etc. On the non-scenic part of the layout there is about 4ft of straight double-track, as long as the longest train I want to run. I thought, why not attach a piece of wood under the baseboard; cut out the bits of baseboard that the straight track is on; seperate the two tracks; make some more identical pieces of straight track on same-sized pieces of wood; and sort of use them as casettes?
I've attached a Paint drawing of what I mean, just on a smaller scale and with one track.
It would be great to hear people's opinions because I'm not really sure if this would work
Thanks

 

[ralphchadkirk]

No image attached...

 

[blackettstreet]

No image attached...

sorry, fixed now

 

[142094]

There is something in the real world called a traverser, which basically moves sideways to allow different stock to be put onto one line. I've seen several layouts where they do this at the fiddle yards to save space, but instead of having just one traverser, there is a whole section of parallel tracks which act as one.

Wikipedia article here.

 

[swj99]

Sounds like a sensible idea to me. Couldn't you make some sort of electrical contacts for the removable rail, possibly recessed into the board ?

 

[Heinz57]

Not a daft idea at all! Quite a good one actualy!

Many layouts use similar ideas to this one, so there is no reason why it would not work. Just make sure you have decent electrical connections. I suggest using JACK connectors

 

[hairyhandedfool]

Cassettes have been used in place of fiddle yards for a number of years in some cases but they tend to be on the end of end to end layouts. Putting one or two in a loop seems like the next logical step, but you will have to make sure all the tracks line up and that they all work. I would perhaps suggest a cassette for each track though, because if you had twin track cassettes and wanted to run two trains on different cassettes, you'd have to do some fancy reorganising!

 

[tsr]

It's a good idea, but for OO gauge track, at least, you also have the option of a rerailer. These can be purchased either as an add-on for "normal" track or as a component integrated into a standard straight. At the moment I only model in OO gauge and thus I am a bit hazy on the specifics of component availability for O, N, Z and other gauges.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I am planning to purchase a couple of rerailers very shortly for a shelf layout.