Thinking About T-Trak

I was active in N scale on and off for about 20 years when I was younger, ending about 1987. I still have most of this equipment (including some of the very nice brass models that used to be available). I've never officially sworn it off, and especially when the late Carl Arendt was active on his micro layout site, I've sometimes thought about building some type of micro or small layout in N.

Earlier this year, MR and MR Video Plus took up the subject of T-Trak, which I'd never heard of. Neil Besougloff does a quick summary of MR's coverage starting at about 0:58 here. If you have the June 2016 MR or an MRVP subscription, you can see the whole thing. T-Trak began in Japan, where space is very limited, and often modelers assemble temporary layouts using Kato sectional track and accessories right on the living room floor.

T-Trak is an expansion of this concept, using small basic modules a little over a foot square, dimensioned to use Kato N track and connected exclusively with Kato rail joiners where the modules join. A lot of the T-Trak modules I see are pretty simple and seem to be used by module groups that build big communal layouts similar to NTrak or Freemo at gatherings in community centers and so forth, using the folding tables such places have to support the modules.

You need to have a local group to take advantage of this, and I'm always a little leery of groups and politics. In any case, there's no such group in my area. But I think T-Trak modules can be used to build a small individual layout that's easily disassembled and configurable. In addition, I like the idea of Kato-style sectional track in any scale. And if I were to have to downsize in the future, this could form the basis of a layout I might be able to have in the old folks' home, largely pre-built and ready for reassembly, even if my abilities at that point might not allow me to start anything new.

So I ordered some T-Trak module kits. In addition, I want to take advantage of technology advances in the hobby that have come along since I started my HO layout in the 1990s. I like DCC and want to expand my use of it to include controlling switches with stationary decoders. This should simplify wiring and eliminate the need for an old-style control panel. None of my N locos is DCC ready -- I got all of them before DCC came along -- and converting them will be a project in itself. On the other hand, a $20 part will let me connect my existing NCE Power Cab to the T-Trak layout.