Track and Trestle System

[Anonymous]

I know that track made by Lionel and MTH both have trestle sets to where you can raise your track from the ground and such. Now my question is, what kind of trestle system can be used for track like GarGraves, Atlas and the like? It's apparent that there's no commercially made trestle system for those track systems. And though you can custom build from wood and such, it would take alot of time and some skill to make the kind of trestle system you would want for your track.

Anyone have any ideas? I am planning to go with the GarGraves track system, along with using Ross for the switches. Since GG and Ross are directly compatible joiner-wise, I shouldn't go wrong.

[Roger Bielen]

The least expensive is to build your own, Scenic Express has prebuilt components in their catalogue. They have a variety of heights.

For the one I build I ripped pine down to 1/4" X 1/4" for the main members and bought bass wood strips for anything smaller.

[Anonymous]

Sounds good....what cutting materials would one need to accompli***his if you were to build your own?

[Roger Bielen]

Chris, I have a basic table saw that I use for misc. projects. When ripping the pine down to 1/4" sq. be exremely careful, if you hit a knot, or other weak spot it'll come shooting off the saw, wear safety glasses, gloves, use a pusher and stand to the side. For cutting the various lengths I use a model sized miter box and razor saw. to add some detail I "pegged" the joints, in addition to the glue, using HO scale rail spikes.

I'm not able to post any photos at this time due to a photog recently taking pictures of my layout for a possible future article in CTT but if you do a search under Roger B. you'll probably find some of my photos.

For constructing the uprights I drew templates, pasted them to foam cored poster board, and covered them with wax paper so that I could pin them while the glue dried. I think I used a 15 deg. angle for the outer columns.