Atlantic City N-Scale Gathering - April 21-23

T-TRAK Layout Report

By Dave Ferrari, Northern New Jersey N-trak 

The 2023 N Scale Gathering at the Atlantic County 4H Fairgrounds took place on Saturday, April 22 and Sunday, April 23 with setup on Friday, April 21. I was coordinator for the Combined T-TRAK layout again this year.

There were 86 separate modules provided by six (6) different clubs covering four (4) states: Atlantic County 4H Model Railroaders, New Jersey Southern N-trak Northern New Jersey N-Trak, Jersey Central N-Trak, Keystone N-Trak (PA) and Lynchburg Area N Scalers (VA). In addition to participants who brought modules, there were several attendees running trains and helping with setup and breakdown. 

The T-TRAK layout this year was a bit smaller than last year’s. There were fourteen standard (96” x 30”) banquet tables and eight narrow (96” x 18”) classroom tables used to set up the layout. It was 36' by 28' in a "backwards J" or “modified fishhook” shape, the same as last year. There were 156 feet of modules, or four and three-quarters scale miles. That was double-track mainline and the total run length of the “Red Line”. The modules were the equivalent of 165 single modules. I've listed a full breakdown of module types below and have included the "As Built" plan. 

Setup started Friday afternoon at 1 PM. Once all the table covers were on we started to set up the modules. We had all the modules in place, leveled and snapped together by about 6:15 PM. The Red Line was DCC along with a large Yellow Line loop. A smaller Yellow loop was analog. Everything was running well after a bit of trouble shooting with our wiring bus. We had more trouble with shorts in the DCC system soon after Mike Maloney, my club’s DCC expert, left for his hotel. It turned out one of the modules had a power feed wired with the polarity backwards. A big thank you to Chris Oliva for helping us trouble shoot that problem. 

In addition to the Combined T-TRAK Layout, the 4H Club had another T-TRAK layout in the club room. It was made up of all 4H members’ modules. It included 7 Doubles, a Triple, a Single and 4 Corners. The ends were 2 Standard Corners split by a Double. It was on 4 standard banquet tables, 2 rows back to back with a gap in the middle to stretch it a bit. 

Thanks again to everyone who participated! 

Module Count: 

Singles: 21 

Doubles: 34 

Triples: 14 

Quads: 1 

Standard Corners: 3 

Wide Corners: 6 (includes 1 Wide Inside Corner) 

Inside Corners: 1 

Jackson Junctions: 2 

Ferrari Junctions: 2 

7” Bridges: 1 

One-inch spacer modules: 1 

Photo by Mike Wong