Eastwood Town - A tribute to Gordon's modelling.

[gordon s]

Oh no, not the comfy chair.......

 

http://youtu.be/CSe38dzJYkY

[92220]

Not an estate car, sledgehammer or chainsaw in sight..... Prospects for the long term survival of ET are improving!

Looking great Gordon!

 

Iain

 

 

[gordon s]

Well it's Friday and I've managed to get a few more hours in and ET is starting to take shape although there is still a long way to go. The last few days have been spent laying the next double junction and starting the 1:100 gradient up to ET terminus. The junction measures just under a metre long and consists of two D12 turnouts plus a switched diamond. Just to prove even the best laid plans can go awry, these two turnouts sit right over a board join with the motor on one board and the diverging tracks on the other. Not ideal, but I had little option in this case, without completely relaying the old stairwell board. I'll live with it, but of course it will mean some clever track removal should we ever move...

 

I have a real love/hate relationship with gradients. Yes, they look great and allow different levels on the layout, but somehow all of mine have failed miserably. 1:50 was to steep for steam locos and 7/8 coaches, so a minimum of 1:100 has been set, but a bigger problem was the sag that occurred between the supports, even with 12mm ply. It may only have been a mm or so, but made a long train look pretty appalling as it bobbed up and down as though it were travelling up the A68 towards Scotland.

 

In this case I have put supports in every 200mm so hopefully it will remain flat. The gradient starts at 1:300 for the first two feet and then levels out at 1:100. It will finish with a similar vertical curve once it reaches ET terminus, over 40' away.

 

Overall I'm happy with the progress being made. It still takes much longer than I expect, but now I no longer feel I must work on the layout and can just take things in my own time.

 

 

 

Edited November 16, 2012 by gordon s

[Andrew P]

Great pics again Gordon, I am longing for the day when I can get a Roudy Roundy going again, long freights and sweeping curves, viaducts, cuttings and embankments, ahh modellers heaven. Please keep the progress pics coming,

 

Cheers Andy.

[Ramblin Rich]

Hello Gordon, great to see how your progressing with this. I'm envious of your space!

With regards to the gradients - it might be too late now and I can't tell if you have the space underneath, but could you put some lengths of ply vertically underneath the incline to form an 'L' girder in order to limit the amount of sagging?

[gordon s]

Thanks Rich and Andy for your comments. There are two issues with an L girder Rich. The Brilliant Baseboard egg crate construction on 200mm centres makes it difficult to use an L girder until you get to a height that will allow the girder to sit there without fouling the cross members. My experience of L girders would suggest they have to be at least 75mm deep so in reality that could only apply to the last 25% of the gradient. I've tried to overcome this before by using 6mm mdf siderails with some success and I may yet try that solution, although I'm hoping closer spacing with the supports will help.

 

I could slot the BB cross members as they are 130mm deep, but I'm still not sure about a single beam down the middle. My track bed is 150mm wide, so would probably need two beams, one each side and of course that means more complications. I guess it's wait and see.....

 

The plus side is these straights are actually beneath ET terminus and won't be seen, so no one will know....

[The Stationmaster]

Have you ever come across spline roadbed Gordon? A rather clever (although perhaps wasteful of material?) US idea where you are using an open benchwork (I realise you aren't but could you in this instance?

 

Anyway if you're not familiar with it the principle is that you use strips of material arranged vertically and gradually glue more together as you build out from the first one -realising any picture is far better than my cack-worded explanation there are quite a few here, the big advanrage being that the subbase of the gradient is, in efect, continuous because of the lamination process

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=spline+roadbed&hl=en&client=safari&sa=X&rls=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&ei=yG2mUOWQMoPX0QWyn4CICg&ved=0CB0QsAQ&biw=1299&bih=986

[gordon s]

I have Mike and it's quite a novel solution for a single track, but move it out to double track and you have 50mm spacing + 32mm track width. That's something like 14 strips of 6mm mdf. That in itself is only a few minutes on a bench saw, but the glueing and clamping could take ages. I think in all honesty it's a compromise I'm willing to make provided it's not an issue with Kadee couplings. They're pretty good all round but the depth of the coupling means they are susceptible to vertical movement and a mm here and there can mean a rake coming apart. What 's been interesting this time is using a 2m spirit level which has made setting the risers a lot easier.

 

Fingers crossed it will be fine....and if not, it will be in a tunnel, so out of sight, out of mind... and what's half a train between friends.

[JeffP]

So long as they get half each......LOL

 

And we do this because we enjoy it?

[gordon s]

I owe you an apology Mike, I hadn't seen this type before..

 

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=spline+roadbed&hl=en&client=safari&sa=X&rls=en&biw=1299&bih=986&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=1YKTCoA9EinVnM:&imgrefurl=http://www.northtexasnarrowgauge.com/jackwalton/benchwork/page3.htm&docid=cK8jCOzCirk03M&imgurl=http://www.northtexasnarrowgauge.com/jackwalton/benchwork/loop2.jpg&w=640&h=480&ei=b4GmUJuSM-HF0QWZ84CYBA&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=979&sig=101374729446913505609&page=1&tbnh=146&tbnw=182&start=0&ndsp=33&ved=1t:429,r:6,s:0,i:87&tx=112&ty=77

 

Interesting variation on normal spline construction. Food for thought.....

[Guest Belgian]

That spline grade also illustrates the joys of American basements: perhaps I'd better move across the Atlantic to get a decent railway room .. .!

 

JE

[Robert McGee]

What version are you on now Gordon, must be V5? But with that comes experience, and the more you do, the more you learn different skills, the more reasons I like railway modeling. The second to last photo in this thread, is that board in the middle staying there or are you building in the middle, I can't find your most recent plan.

 

Having been a away for 5 months, it's certainly changed for the better, and hope you keep plowing away, and soon enough you'll have somewhere to sit, and watch trains go by.

[gordon s]

Hi Robert, because of the sloping roof I have to work with, the boards that run down below the eaves are built in the middle of the room and then slid back into position. This is the most recent plan and the board you can see is at the top of this plan.

 

[92220]

Superb stuff as ever Gordon. A delight to see the combination of planning, patience, skilled workmanship and determination to do things right. Beautifully flowing trackwork and continued inspiration for the rest of us. Thanks!

 

Iain

[Ray H]

. . . . . A delight to see the combination of planning, patience, skilled workmanship and determination to do things right. . . . . . . . . Thanks!

 

Iain

 

And that's just supping the brown falling down liquid.

 

Sorry, couldn't resist it after seeing the earlier picture of the basedboard with an almost full glass in it.

 

I've managed one 3-way point before I got distracted over a week ago and I have another 26 ponts to build and I've not laid any track, so Gordon is miles ahead of me but his work still provides the impetus for me to keep going.

[Siberian Snooper]

Hi Gordon

 

I have only used 20mm verticals to produce a 'T' section under a 4mm thick plywood track bed see this thread with photo's on the Templot forum.

 

http://85a.co.uk/forum/view_topic.php?id=2077&forum_id=6&jump_to=13834#p13834.

 

No sign of sagging yet on 20 year old baseboards.

 

Cheers SS

[artizen]

That link to the American NG layout is interesting. One of the changes I would have to make for Australian conditions is to glue and screw the blocks and rails due to the temperature/humidity extremes we experience in Brisbane. Seems a clever, low cost and accurate way of getting inclines on your baseboards.

[gordon s]

I must say Mike, I'm very taken with the 'skeleton' spline technique shown in your link. The ones I had always seen before took numerous strips of ply and glued them into one solid block. As I said, I think that could be a neat way of doing things for a single track, but double track main line would take a lot of time. Here the 'skeleton' option would really be of use and I'm going to have a play in producing the quadrant sections needed to link between the straight BB's. I'd always thought of modifying some BB's to suit and I know they now offer curved boards, but there is something special about making your own, even if it's just the challenge of the whole thing.

 

I can visualise taking a Templot plan with the trackbed edges marked out and using that as a guide to the radius and then building up a curved section from a combination of 6mm ply or MDF strips plus softwood blocks. I wouldn't normally use MDF other than for framing or edging, but I have some sheets in the garage and it wouldn't take long to cut some 1200mm strips.

 

Watch this space....

 

Despite both Tottenham and England's best efforts in snatching defeat from victory yesterday, I managed to get the remainder of track on this board in place. This allowed some testing on two fronts. The first being clearance across parallel curves for Mk1's. I have had problems before with overhang, but am pleased to report that on 50mm centres there is still clearance on all points of the curve, so that was a relief.

 

The second part of the test is my high speed test. A very free running set of MK1's are propelled by hand at something like a scale speed of 150mph plus through pointwork and crossings in in each direction. It's a great way of finding any bumps, hollows and track misalignment, but does require some old stock that will survive the odd drop to the floor. Most of this rake have broken buffers and windows caved in, so look like they've been vandalised, but if they'll go through without problem, it's a green light for most if not all my stock.

 

A simple test and one guaranteed to get the pulse racing. Thankfully large radius turnouts overcome most of the centrifugal force issues....

 

Do not try this with new stock or a weak heart......

 

 

[sixoh8sixoh]

How many Mk1/floor interactions were there?

[gordon s]

I was going to say that after a while you develop the reactions of Joe Hart.....

 

There have been a couple Mike, hence the caved in windows and broken buffers, but generally I can tell if there's going to be a problem through low speed checks in the build process. It's certainly far faster than any loco will move on ET under DCC power.

[martin_wynne]

I can visualise taking a Templot plan with the trackbed edges marked out and using that as a guide to the radius and then building up a curved section from a combination of 6mm ply or MDF strips plus softwood blocks.

 

Hi Gordon,

 

Not sure what you have in mind there, but Templot can now show an adjustable cess width on each side of the trackbed, which could be used to represent the side members of a spline construction.

 

Click the geometry > trackbed intent > ballast edge + cess menu option.

 

The cess infill uses the same colour as the new track background colour: output > output drawing options > track background colour... menu item. To save ink, the cess infill is shown hatched (on printers which support hatching):

 

 

 

regards,

 

Martin.

[gordon s]

Thanks Martin. I use the trackbed width/trackbed edges as a cutting guide for all my ply trackbed pieces. From what you have outlined in your post, I could set the cess at 18" (6mm) and the trackbed width at 11' (44mm) and could almost generate a drawing showing the strips and spacer blocks, which is one step further than that I was visualising.

 

Never ceases to amaze me just how much is built into Templot...

[gordon s]

Still plodding on and seem to have spent most of this week lying flat out on the floor dodging solder blobs. All the wiring is in place and working fine. One of the tips I picked up along the way was to use a continuity/short circuit tester and clipping that across the main bus wires and then leaving it live whilst you are wiring. With dozens of droppers in place it's so easy to get a red or black reversed and then compound the error by wiring it up. With a tester permanently on, it either lays silent or there is a load buzz to tell you that wire will cause a short. In my case it's invariably a pcb sleeper that I use to connect droppers, where I have missed the cut across the copper. When you know immediately there is a fault, it takes seconds to find the short and correct it at this stage, versus half an hour or so desoldering wires to try and isolate a short later.

 

I got mine from Amazon and it was £20 well spent.

 

http://www.amazon.co...0/dp/B000LYTTRK

 

Today has been airbrushing the track and finishing off before ballasting. I use a Vallejo acrylic primer and then a home mixed brown paint as a top coat. A quick wipe and clean and now I can start ballasting. Whoopee! I'm overjoyed...

 

So that's half of the loops complete. Another week to ballast and then connect up to the other boards will free me up to get started on the next section. Thankfully this will all be plain track, so should be a little quicker. I'm not committing myself to a time line as I've made that mistake before, but trains running a full circuit could happen in 2013....

 

 

[Physicsman]

Superb, Gordon. Seeing that convinces me even more of the need of an airbrush. I'm in no hurry to ballast anything, but I'll certainly follow your lead with the "background grime" on the track. What sort of brown did you use - a commercially available brown acryllic in different shades?

 

Oh btw - you will be running trains in 2013! That is your mantra... now, repeat after me ... I will ....

 

Jeff

[Ray H]

Looks bl**dy brilliant. Can't wait to see trains running on it.

 

I presume that you airbrush in the room. Is there any problem with smell/overspray?