I received a couple of packages yesterday. They contained some videos of trains, and another WD Elements portable hard drive. I decided to get another drive, because I liked the first one so much. This time I went with the 640GB version, since I got a good deal on it.
I’ve been working on my model train layout quite a lot again. This time, I’ve been hunting down and eliminating all the problems.
One of those problems was that some sections of track had some dead spots. I would have solved that easily, but the hobby shop didn’t have any terminal joiners in stock for a while now. Terminal joiners are like a regular rail joiner, but they have a wire attached to them to send power to the rails. So I decided that it was time for me to learn to solder and make my own terminal joiners. It actually went pretty well, except I was a bit sloppy with the solder. My hands are just not good for working with very small things, but I still managed to get it done. Now the soldering iron’s tip is all black. I’ll need to clean it up somehow. 
Another problem I had was that the couplers on the locomotives were not at the right height. Some couplers even got so low that they would catch on turnout points and cause derailments. So I bought some more couplers, some special tools, and a gauge to make sure they’re set to the proper height.
There was also a section of track that caused derailments because of the radius of the curve. Apparently, I tried fitting a larger radius curve than I should have in the limited space, and it caused some parts of it to be a bit too sharp. Flex-track doesn’t always want to keep the desired shape, even when it’s nailed down, either. Replacing that track with a slightly smaller radius curve made from sectional track actually solved that problem. That’s fine, since I had a bunch of old sectional track that I wasn’t using anyway, and I got to put it to use. I also used some of those sections around the turntable, since they make it easier to line up with it than flex-track.