I finally managed to make it to The Train Shop in Santa Clara to pick up a few supplies, as well as some N track for the coffee table layout. I'm going to use Code 80 Atlas track, as it's cheap and reliable. The section ends are a bit odd looking. Seems there are some "snap" pieces that would hold the sections together. I'll either live with the look, or "fix" them, but that seems more work than it's worth.
The curves are the minimum radius Atlas offers at 9 3/4" (24.7cm), which is what I used when I planned the size of the coffee table. While wider curves would have been nice, I just don't have the space for a huge coffee table, and it's already quite big as is. Any bigger and I might as well convert the living room into the layout room.
Aside from confirming sizing, I also wanted to see my little Bachmann 2-6-2 Prairie run and see how it navigates the curves. Full score on both counts. The loco looks nice, is extremely quiet (especially compared to my HO Maerklin locos), and runs just fine. It seems it prefers to go forward though, as the speed with tender forward is a tad slower at the same voltage setting. This is an analog DC locomotive. I'm not planning to run the coffee table layout with digital control anytime soon.
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