End of May update… also know as ” nothing has really gotten done”. New job, new challenges. Since my last post I have been out of town for two of the last three weeks. The one week I was home I was fully engaged in work issues and unfortunately this is the way it will be until things are straightened out with the company we are now working for.
I have had a chance to get a few things done. In my last post I had talked about starting the planning for the town of Jackson. What was pictured was some general planning , but I have been working on specific planning and have about 50% of the town laid out and finalized. I should have the whole thing done in the next week or so.
I also have been working on some background buildings for the port of Duluth harbor area. I have been using Design Preservation Models wall sections to build some of the buildings and this is working out well. When I have something to report on I will let you know.
The other thing that is happening is the lower level remodel is done and the furniture is out of the basement. If I have a chance, I might have a chance to start the base for the helix, which would finish up the basic benchwork. If this happens, trust me, you will be the first to know.
Oh yes, the town of Jackson. As I mentioned in my last post the town of Jackson has turned into it’s own special little hell. And of course it is all my own fault. As originally planned the layout was longer down the length of the peninsula and the town of Jackson ( Kirkland in the original plan from Model Railroader ) almost dropped right onto the layout. And then I screwed up.
First, as I mentioned before in an attempt keep from buying things I didn’t need I started building model ships. Once built, I needed some place to put them, so I put up a wall of shelves. It’s really nice to have someplace to display them and I have received many compliments on them. However they stick out 12″ and the layout had to be shortened. No problem it’s only a foot. Then as the peninsula was being built and I was moving around what would be the end of the peninsula I figured I should have more then the 3 feet I had figured for an aisle, so I expanded it to about 4 1/2 feet. This gave me a comfortable aisle to move things around without hitting the layout or the ships on the shelves. As the peninsula was about a foot short of the original Kirkland plan, plus the foot for the shelves and now another 1 1/2 foot, I was now 3 1/2 feet short.
Second, as I was building the end of the peninsula I shortened up the transition where the table flairs out for the rounded end of the peninsula.
View down the outside leg of peninsula. The town of Jackson is in the planning stages.
As you can see in the above picture you will note that the subroadbed pushes out almost to the edge of the benchwork. You can bet that as I am laying track, that I going to be sure that it is as perfect as I can get it. A derailment here would be catastrophic to say the least. But as of right now I believe that I can live with it, as the alternative is to decrease the radius of the turn and I am unwilling to do that. It’s one of the major compromises I made on the last layout and I always regretted it. A possibility here is to superelevate the turn.
Planning the town itself has become something of a challenge as I try to get everything into it that I liked from the plan. I realize that some things might have to be left out or shortened. But I’m trying to keep the flavor of the plan. I have found that in some places of the plan that by flipping a turnout around, meaning flipping the straight thru part with the diverging route, I can pick up space as you don’t need to have a straight section to avert an s-curve.
I will continue to plug away at it until I have a workable track plan that I can live with and don’t feel as I’ve compromised. Below is the start of the planning.
Planning the track arrangement for Jackson.Closer view of the beginnings of the track planning for Jackson.
As you will note from the above pictures, I made it over to the storage locker for some of the needed buildings. I thought I had the box with the throttles in it, but I didn’t. I guess another trip is in order.
I know “Early May update” is a little ambiguous, but I was unsure as how to title this post as I have accomplished two different things.
First, when I was planning the layout I knew I would be building a helix to connect the decks. It was the how that I wasn’t sure of. There are about as many ways to build one as there are people who build them, probably no single one is any more “right ” then any other. I just wasn’t sure how I was going to tackle it. Because you can’t obviously cut a whole helix out of a single piece of plywood, you are going to have to join the individual pieces together. Which in turn means that you are going to have to allow for clearance for splice plates if used on the bottom of individual pieces or come up with a creative way to join the pieces together where you don’t have to worry about clearance issues.
I decided to go with the latter. First was to try and figure the most efficient use of a piece of plywood. You can’t get a full turn out of a 4′ x 8′ sheet, but you can get two half circles out of one but with a tremendous amount of waste. Same goes for 1/4 turns. But I did figure that if I broke the circle into sixths ( a 60 degree arc ) I might be able to efficiently use a full sheet of plywood. Second was how to join the pieces together. What I came up with was to use 3/8″ plywood. I would take the 6 pieces and lay them out in a circle and then laminate them to 6 more pieces offset by half( a joint every 30 degrees ).
Then the problem was cutting all the pieces out and getting them to align right. I figures I could cut a master out and then use it to make the pieces using it and a pattern bit in my router table, but the thought of trying to get a ” perfect” master was a bit beyond my abilities. Turns out I didn’t have to . It occurred to me that my brother owns a metal cutting shop that uses high pressure water, computer controlled cutting machines. I asked if he could do this for me and gave him the dimension that I needed, he plugged them into the computer and in no time I had a the master I wanted cut out of 1/4″ aluminum.
Now I wish that I could tell you that I was cutting the pieces for the helix, but I still have that issue of the train room being used for storage while we wait for the carpet install. What I am doing though is working on the subroadbed leading up to the helix as I need to set the entry height of the helix loops.
I bought a half sheet ( 4’x 4′ ) of 3/4″ plywood for the curves around the end of the peninsula and using the master, traced a bunch of curved section on it to try and see how many I could expect to get out of a full sheet. I was hoping to get 12 pieces as this would be enough for a full circle ( when using the 3/8″ plywood ), as it turned out I got 7 pieces out of the half sheet which means I can comfortably get 14 and possibly 15 out of a full sheet. YAY! Below are a series of photos that shows how it was done.
Curved subroadbed laid out for cutting.The 1/4″ aluminum pattern.The blanks cut and ready for the router table.The first blank ready to go through the router.The first curved section cut and routed.The set, though not lined up, all are perfect duplicates of the pattern.
Since I already had the plywood base in for the town of Jackson, I worked up and down from there. Jackson is 3/4″ above 0, so I worked down from there to my 0 height. Coming out of Jackson is the end of the peninsula. The half curve there is a 2″ rise which matches the rise in the helix. If a train has a problem here, it won’t make it up the helix, better to know where you can see the train then when it’s in the helix and you can’t see it. Below are photos of the curves installed, you will also see that I got the backdrops painted.
the first curve in place. The incline matches that of what the helix will be.View down the inside leg of the peninsula.View down the outside leg of peninsula. The town of Jackson is in the planning stages.View at the end of the peninsula.The bottom leg of the peninsula, this is where the climb to the helix starts.
As you can see I also started planning the track arrangement for Jackson, but as it turns out it is it’s own special hell and worthy of it’s own post.
