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Paul3, thanks for the tips. I see how the spacer block method would be best for roadbed with risers. I don't understand all these people using the thickest plywood they can as subroadbe, when they could do spline (or spline with spacers), and make it much stiffer. (The mechanical engineer in me would prefer to see a tall cross-section spline, made out of as little material as possible - which the spline with spacer achieves). I've also seen this in Linn Westcott's old book. The reason my roadbed splines are of varied thickness is because I'm cutting their 1/4" height on the table saw, which has proved to be difficult to do accurately. Plus/minus 1/32" tolerance or so, and you end up with a 1/16" thickness difference from one piece to the next. Now, keep in mind, I'm trying to create roadbed using 1/4" thick spline on top of plywood, as opposed to roadbed for open grid benchwork. The nice thing about the spline roadbed is intersections at turnouts, etc. are not super complicated. That is cool. What I need to do is purchase wood that is the correct roadbed thickness for me. I could, now, for example, make 3/4" thick roadbed quite nicely - because that's what the stock material is (1 x material). But if I want to make it 1/4" thick, I have to do the cutting to thickness myself. This is where the tolerancing of my "home tools" becomes problematic. This whole fiasco has also got me thinking about going open-grid vs. table top (a 'la David Barrow's Dominoes). If I go open-grid, my 1x material could become my subroadbed and roadbed spline at once, and I'd have the advantages of open-grid benchwork. In related news, I carried out a highly scientific test last night of walking around my garage and trying to drive a spike into all plywood in site - shelves, scraps, you name it. I must say, spikes went into random plywood just about as easily as it went into pine. Which gets me thinking... Maybe I could just spike right into plywood for flat sections of layouts, and for open-grid sections, do the spline thing, using 3/4" thick spline from 1x stock material. I would likely need to keep the dremel tool with some tiny drill bits within reach for the occasional spiking into a tough spot or knot.
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