Roads & Pavements

[swanmark]

Hi Guys need some advise please, I want to put a sort of austrian type town on my layout with a tram running around the town centre i need some help on how to make the roads and pavements, I intend to run a dc tram, I did look at the kato system but its far too expensive, is there some sort of ready built road with built in n gauge track so it would look like a tramline, what about the Tomix track ?, also my layout is in an L shape, its 6ft 6" x by 2ft and the L section is 3 x 2, I am running 3 or 4 trains on the same amount of track, can you tell me how many pre wired power fishplates I should add to make the running better, thanks

[cupoftea]

Hi Mark

Sorry i cannot help with the pavement but I noticed that you mentioned 'pre wired fishplates'. You may find that in the long run you are better off soldering wires directly to the track (Droppers) rather than soldering wires to fishplates. The connection between a fishplate and the track has the potential to degrade over time and thus cause running problems.
Soldering wires to sections of track minimizes the potential for connection problems in the future. Some may say overkill but i have used soldered droppers on every section of track on the layout I am building so that each section of track has a power supply that does not rely upon fishplates for connection. It does make for more work when laying the track but I would hate to have to rip up track to sort out a bad connection once the layout is complete......