hidden staging track recommendation - compatibility with Atlas 55 and wheels

[mmagliaro]

Ah, the shotgun method. I've heard of it (and back in the day I even used when troubleshooting some computer circuit boards which had hard to pinpoint problems). 

Best solution would be curved rail surface and fully equalized trucks or drivers.  That way the wheels can keep in constant contact with slightly uneven track.  Many Kato trucks have semi-sprung wheels and your scratchbuilt 0-6-0 will also have sprung drivers, right? 

I think the reality in N Scale is that all our pickup is a "shotgun method".  We use the most reliable, spring-loaded thingies that there are (like Kato tender trucks), but in reality, between the light weights, small rail cross section,  slightly-imperfect track, and the ever-present existence of dirt and oxidation, the only way to get these trains to run is to have enough pickup points so that the odds of not having at least one good one on each rail at any given moment are very small.

[nkalanaga]

Even the prototype can have contact issues.  Handcars, motorcars, and hi-rails used to be, and probably still are, insulated.  The assumption is that they're too light to reliably shunt the signal circuits, so make them so they never do, so that everybody knows that they're NOT protected.