Elevated Railway Progress

[s51flyer]

My wife an I have repainted the boys bedroom and started on the decorating. I've also been busy finish painting the roadbed and remounting the roadbed and track permanently to the wall. Also had a trip to Argentina in the middle, so it's been a little hectic!

The pictures below show the completed railroad installation. Still need to complete the wiring, but I have installed a temporary power supply to run trains! My two boys (6 and 3) love it!







Bob...

[bman36]

Bob,
That is fantastic! Now what youngster would not love that? The room looks great. Good for you. Was wondering where you were since I had not seen any posts from you lately. Like what you did with the walls. Gives the room a very soft look. I'll bet Grandpa was only too glad to help out! 6 and 3...starting them out right eh??? Good job. Later eh...Brian. [tup]

[s51flyer]

Thanks Brian! The walls were painted using a divided paint tray and a divided roller. You put two colors into the tray - one on each side of the divide and roll away. In this case, the colors were an off-white and a shade of blue. My wife is still planning to paint a couple Thomas images on the walls. She has this cool projector that you set on top of an image, and it projects the image onto the wall. Move the projector closer or futher to the wall will change the size of the image. She traces it and then paints it with Acrylics. She did this in my daughters room with Unicorns, and it looks pretty cool.

Yep, the boys love trains so much that doing this was a no-brainer. My 6-year old loves building different track arrangements with his wooden Thomas set. Besides, dad gets to play with it too! [:D] Now maybe I can look at an F3 Diesel with 3 or 4 smooth-sided passenger cars... hmm... or, maybe a 2-8-0 pulling a freight consist... the possibilities are endless!

Bob...

[bman36]

Bob,
Next you'll be looking elsewhere in the house to see where you can build at waist level. My wife was unsure when I said I would be building a line around the perimeter of our basement. Once I got started she liked what she saw. Later eh...Brian.

[Anonymous]

Nice Job! Would you mind sharing how you made the base that the track sits on and how its fasten to your walls, It be great but if its a family secret then i can understand that as well.

Thanks in Advance!
Carey

[s51flyer]

Carey,

The roadbed is made from 3/4" plywood. I layed the plywood on my garage floor to scribe the 8' dia curves. I then cut them out with a jig-saw. I was able to get 3 curved sections from one 4x8 sheet.

The curves are about 5-1/2" wide. The straights are about 8" wide. I rounded over all exposed edges with a 1/8" round-over bit chucked in a router. Each curve is made up of one piece of plywood. Additionally, each of the curved corner sections include about 15" of straight section on each end of the curve. This was done for strength. If you give me you're email address, I can email you a JPEG of the CAD drawing I made.

The plywood slides into 3/4" I/D aluminum channel that I mounted to the wall. I looked all over locally, got fed up 'cause I couldn't find what I wanted and then simply ordered the channel online from McMasterCarr. I probably paid more then I had too, but I was running out of patience. :-) I originally planned to use liquid nails to secure the plywood in the channel, but the plywood fits so snuggly that I didn't need to secure it. I used 2-1/2" wood screws to secure the channel to the wall at every stud.

There are 8 sections of plywood that fit end-to-end that make up the entire roadbed, I used a 3/8" x 1/2" rabbit bit in the router to create a lap joint between sections. I then used 5/8" wood screws to secure the lap joints. This required predrilling since you're running pretty close to the edge.

Using the method described above created about a 5' span of unsupported plywood in the curves. To strengthen the curves, I glued 1/4" plywood in a reverse girder fashion to the curved sections. This arrangement is solid, and it looks kinda cool!

One last thing.... I purchased a 100' roll of 1" x 1/16" cork/rubber material from McMasterCarr to lay as subroaded to deaden the "plywood" noise. If you don't do this, the noise from the train running across the plywood carries to the wall board and studs and is fairly loud. The cork is sticky on one side and goes down really easy. I layed two parallel strips, one under each rail. This doesn't deaden the noise completely, but it sure made a HUGE difference.

Look at the other thread for Elev. Railway. It shows some pictures before I painted and may help you see what was actually done.

Hope this helps and enjoy!![:D][:D]

Bob...

[Anonymous]

Thank you very much for taking the time to explain it too me.
I have two questions. 1. 3/4" I/D aluminum channel that would be 3/4 inner dimention channel and where would i start looking for that item? 2. I glued 1/4" plywood in a reverse girder fashion to the curved sections (not sure what this means)?

Thanks again and im going to look for the other pictures you have posted!
Carey
P.S. I love to see the cad jpeg if you have the time to send it to me [e-mail]

[s51flyer]

Carey,

A reverse girder is essentially a through-girder bridge turned upside-down. I used 1/4" plywood about 5' long and 2" wide. It was glued and clamped perpendicular on the edge of the 3/4" plywood roadbed on the curves. You can see this fairly clearly in the third picture in this post.

That's correct on the aluminum channel. The inside dimension is 3/4". You can get it here: http://www.mcmaster.com/ Type in Aluminum channel in the search engine on the McMaster site. However, you may be able to find it cheaper. I got tired of looking locally.

Sent the Jpeg....

Bob...