NorthBritDave. Railroad Modeling is done at your pace. (I know you know that ) Take it easy. I am sure the work will be great when finished.
Thanks for your patience David!
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
More delays. Too hot to work in the garage. The humidex has been reading 37C for several days. That's 91F. If I was half my age it wouldn't bother me, but now it's a killer. It's supposed to cool off later in the week, but I think this is going to be a hot summer!
I am still working on sorting all the stuff around my workbench out. Last night I packed most of my DC locomotives into a tote for future consideration. Now that the workbench has an actual working area on it, I'll have to kick my butt to start building something.
Just like I seen on the map Dave. You did get the Heatwave Sweep up there in Canada too eh? Let it blow over if we all can be so lucky and hopefully it's just a freak thing.
I've been enjoying your thread and looking forward to your continuation when it's not so hot up here.
Building a layout is not a race. 'Steady As She Goes' I'm happy with what I've seen so far here
TF
Track fiddlerBuilding a layout is not a race. 'Steady As She Goes' I'm happy with what I've seen so far here
Thanks TF!
Everyone's encouragement, advice and patience means a great deal to me.
Cheers!!
Sounds like gaps in your trackwork will be a must if you install it in cold conditions. My layout is in the basement, so this warm weather is a great excuse to work on the layout...
Simon
Hi Simon,
Thanks for the reminder. I plan on feeding every piece of track (except where short sections can be soldered to another piece of track), so leaving gaps won't be a problem.
The garage temperature does swing quite a bit between seasons but it never gets cold enough to freeze in the winter. I have a small space heater that is capable of making it comfortable during cold weather, but I don't like to leave it running.
The garage can get quite hot during the summer although most of the time it stays cooler than the outside temperatures. It would be fairly easy to mount an air conditioner through the outside wall should I need to.
hon30critter...I'll have to kick my butt to start building something.
"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."
Sorry guys. It looks like the hot weather followed me up from Florida!
-Kevin
Living the dream.
Thanks Bear!! That's exactly what I need! I need to get back in gear and do more on the layout every day! I hope I can meet your expectations.
SeeYou190Sorry guys. It looks like the hot weather followed me up from Florida!
Hi Kevin,
Not to worry. Your influence is only temporary. The temperatures are supposed to get back to seasonal norms by the weekend.
hon30critter Hi Simon, Thanks for the reminder. I plan on feeding every piece of track (except where short sections can be soldered to another piece of track), so leaving gaps won't be a problem. The garage temperature does swing quite a bit between seasons but it never gets cold enough to freeze in the winter. I have a small space heater that is capable of making it comfortable during cold weather, but I don't like to leave it running. The garage can get quite hot during the summer although most of the time it stays cooler than the outside temperatures. It would be fairly easy to mount an air conditioner through the outside wall should I need to. Dave
A typical length of nickel-silver rail (36") will expand in length .023" going from the low to the high temperatures described. That's midway between 1/64" and 1/32". Hardly anything at all. Unless you try to restrict that movement.
I'm experienced in the matter. And in the following repairs.
Ed
7j43k hon30critter Hi Simon, Thanks for the reminder. I plan on feeding every piece of track (except where short sections can be soldered to another piece of track), so leaving gaps won't be a problem. The garage temperature does swing quite a bit between seasons but it never gets cold enough to freeze in the winter. I have a small space heater that is capable of making it comfortable during cold weather, but I don't like to leave it running. The garage can get quite hot during the summer although most of the time it stays cooler than the outside temperatures. It would be fairly easy to mount an air conditioner through the outside wall should I need to. Dave A typical length of nickel-silver rail (36") will expand in length .023" going from the low to the high temperatures described. That's midway between 1/64" and 1/32". Hardly anything at all. Unless you try to restrict that movement. I'm experienced in the matter. And in the following repairs. Ed
I was able to spend a little more time on the layout last night. I had a closer look at how level the foam surface is and I found two more areas which required some work with the Surform rasp and the long body work sander. In both cases the irregularities were fairly minor, but I decided to smooth them out anyways. Better safe than sorry. The WS foam worked fine.
I also printed a few more track plan sheets for the south east corner of the layout. Once I get them glued down I will be in a better position to match up the curves on the east end of the layout. You may recall that my first attempt at gluing down the diagrams resulted in a bit of a discrepancy between the supposed locations for the curves on the east end of the plan.
One thing that I have discovered (I may have mentioned this before) is that the river bed/beach area that I carved into the foam freehand doesn't match the plan at all! I'll have to do some conjuring to figure out how to deal with that.
hon30critterThe humidex has been reading 37C for several days. That's 91F.
Actually, 37oC is body temperature so it would really "feel" closer to 99oF in your garage.
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
hon30critter I was able to spend a little more time on the layout last night. I had a closer look at how level the foam surface is and I found two more areas which required some work with the Surform rasp and the long body work sander. In both cases the irregularities were fairly minor, but I decided to smooth them out anyways. Better safe than sorry. The WS foam worked fine. I also printed a few more track plan sheets for the south east corner of the layout. Once I get them glued down I will be in a better position to match up the curves on the east end of the layout. You may recall that my first attempt at gluing down the diagrams resulted in a bit of a discrepancy between the supposed locations for the curves on the east end of the plan. One thing that I have discovered (I may have mentioned this before) is that the river bed/beach area that I carved into the foam freehand doesn't match the plan at all! I'll have to do some conjuring to figure out how to deal with that. Cheers!! Dave
It's good to hear that you are making progress Dave. In my books, the important thing is to keep the ball rolling, not matter how slow it goes. Jus keep an ice-pack ready in the freezer in case of you know what.
In my experience, leveling the track will be inevitable no matter how much effort you put in getting a level base. My steam locos are pretty sensitive to that, so I had to check the level of my trackwork inch by inch, especially the curves, adding styrene shims here and there to get it right. I'm pretty proud of the fact that I can run a brass 2-10-4 on my 22'' curves... Some grinding was involved on the trucks, I must admit .
You will not regret the time you spend meticulously making your trackage perfect. Not after the fact, anyway.
A bit of good music can be helpful to help you take your time laying your track. Your favorite stuff works good I've reconsidered this morning my zebra days are over now too
The more time you take care laying track the better Dave!
Even the careful preperation of what you're doing with the uneven foam before roadbed is time well spent.
A layout is not a race and your doing good Kid
Track fiddlerHow about some Zebra Somewhat a semi ratchet band but may push you further my friend
Hi TF,
I'm afraid that my taste in music has mellowed. I still enjoy listening to Led Zepplin and Supertramp and the Stones, but only when I'm in the mood to be a bit rowdy. When I want to relax, which is most of the time, I listen to Gordon Lightfoot, James Taylor, Jimmy Buffet, Sarah Mclaughlin, Roy Orbison, etc.
hon30critter I had a closer look at how level the foam surface is and I found two more areas which required some work with the Surform rasp and the long body work sander. In both cases the irregularities were fairly minor, but I decided to smooth them out anyways. Better safe than sorry.
This sounds like time well spent.
I have never regretted making track as perfect as possible.
I just finished gluing down the last few pages of the track printout on the east end of the layout. I managed to get the curves to line up top to bottom pretty well. That surprised me a bit because I thought they would be out of alignment, but not so.
I will also correct a previous statement where I had suggested that the river bed was not carved in the right place. That also proved to be wrong. The river is where it is supposed to be! Happy, happy!! I was worried about the four bridges not fitting where they were supposed to as well, but in fact they will fit fine.
Don't ask me how I got so confused (or why). Anyhow, all's well that ends well, or at least close enough!
Here is the full track plan glued down. I am much happier with the larger radii curves even though they are close to the edge. There will be a 1x4 elbow rest all the way around the layout so in fact the trains will be about 4" - 5" from the edge of the benchwork:
This is a closer view of one of the areas that I levelled using a Surform rasp, long body sander, wallpaper straightedge and WS foam putty. It also shows the river bed cutout and the 'almost perfect' matching of the tracks on the east curves which you will recall I was so worried about:
I guess the next step is to lay some cork!
In preparation for laying the cork roadbed, I decided to see how well the precut cork turnout pieces from Itty Bitty Lines fit my Peco turnouts. They seem to match the turnouts pretty well, although the turnouts are longer than the cork and the diverging route in the cork is at a slightly sharper angle than that of the turnouts. The differences are minor so no big deal.
I ordered the cork turnout beds some time ago, and since then I have made several changes to the plan. Now I have a shortage of right hand cork turnout roadbeds and a serious surplus of left hand beds. That is proof once again that I love to get ahead of myself, and when I do that, I usually get things wrong. I'm not going to order more right hand cork roadbeds. I'm going to turn some of the surplus left hand beds upside down, sand the edges off and use WS foam putty to correct the profile.
I also decided to pull all of the necessary turnouts for the layout out of my vast collection of Peco turnouts. Given the fact that I have about 70 Peco turnouts which I had purchased years ago for my first layout plan, I thought that I should have enough for the new smaller layout. Well, I almost had all the turnouts needed for the new layout but I came up short one large right hand switch. I was able to modify the plan to allow me to substitute a medium right hand turnout for the larger unit so all is well for now. The turnout leads to a staging yard which will be built at some point in the future so for now the change in turnout size will have no effect. When I get to building the separate yard I may replace the medium turnout with a large radius unit.
Cheers folks!!
Again, thank you all for following my thread!
Impressive Dave.
Is that a double switchback I see on the left side? Boooooo, Hissssssss.
maxmanIs that a double switchback I see on the left side? Boooooo, Hissssssss.
Hi maxman,
I'm not quite sure what a double switchback is.
The part that you referred to as the 'left side' is at the top of the diagram below. In that area, I have two crossovers between the outer loop and the inner loops and two leads into a very small yard area. The two turnouts feeding the yard allow for run arounds. I see the crossovers and the small yard as being two separate entities. If a train on the outer loop wants to drop a car in the small yard my plan is for it to go around the outer loop to the second set of crossovers at the bottom of the diagram and switch to the inner loop there.
Eventually there will be a wye in the staging area (not shown) to reverse train direction.
Yes, everything is very close together. I don't have any choice. The layout is 12' x 5'4". Yes, the run around will foul the mainline. I can live with that.
Here is a simplified track diagram. Click on it to expand:
A switchback is when you head into a stub siding, usually where there was an industry, then reverse through a switch coming off that siding to reach another industry. Generally it was necessary to move cars out of the way at the first location to get to cars at the second. This was a prevalent track planning idea that I think was developed to increase “play value” on smaller plans because of the time it took to do all the shuffling.
My opinion was that this might be fun the first couple times, but then just became a pain in the tookis.
So on your plan the first switchback occurs when the train heads off the main into the drill track to access the yard tracks/industrial area. I can see where this is necessary assuming that your drill track will be long enough to pull a full cut of cars out of an individual yard/industrial track.
The second switchback occurs when you have to access the track that comes off the last, or bottom, track under where it says industrial area yard and spurs and goes to the left. I think I’d just eliminate that turnout so that the last track gains a car or two of capacity.
I belonged to a club that had several towns along the main line and every one of them had a switchback. That track plan was made up about 45 years ago and that was the way things were done back then. When they finally got to the point where they actually could do some switching, every one of the track arrangements was reconfigured to eliminate the darn things.
First, thank you for the detailed observations and advice. Much appreciated!
maxmanThe second switchback occurs when you have to access the track that comes off the last, or bottom, track under where it says industrial area yard and spurs and goes to the left. I think I’d just eliminate that turnout so that the last track gains a car or two of capacity.
I had intended to use the little switchback spur for storing a small yard switcher.
maxmanSo on your plan the first switchback occurs when the train heads off the main into the drill track to access the yard tracks/industrial area. I can see where this is necessary assuming that your drill track will be long enough to pull a full cut of cars out of an individual yard/industrial track.
When you refer to a '...full cut of cars...' I'm thinking that the 'full cut' will only be one or two cars. None of the industries is large enough to require more than a car or two at a time.
I have to confess that my primary goal is to just watch trains run. I know that many people have said that that can get boring, but if I get to the point of being bored that will mean that I have actually built a running layout. Let me get there first. Then we can talk about being bored.
Cheers!! Thanks again for your valued input.
hon30critter I have to confess that my primary goal is to just watch trains run. I know that many people have said that that can get boring, but if I get to the point of being bored that will mean that I have actually built a running layout. Let me get there first. Then we can talk about being bored. Dave
Nothing wrong with just watching trains. Kind of relaxing whilst doing little things. Then 'get serious' when you like.
David
To the world you are someone. To someone you are the world
I cannot afford the luxury of a negative thought
NorthBritNothing wrong with just watching trains. Kind of relaxing whilst doing little things. Then 'get serious' when you like.
Hi David,
That is exactly my approach to model railroading! I have designed the layout so that I can watch trains run, and when I choose to do a bit of switching the layout will let me do that as well.
I actually have a bit of a conflict with regard to the engine service facility on the bottom of the diagram. It is mostly geared for steam locomotives but I will be running mostly diesels. I'll just have to treat it as an old facility that has been upgraded with diesel fueling. I have always wanted a steam engine service area with a coal tower, water tank and ash pit, and I will have one! Suits me just fine!