Home Page › Forums › Modeling the Missouri Pacific, Texas & Pacific, etc › Mopac or Texas & Pacific layouts › I’ve bit the bullet, Jan. 15, 2011 › Reply To: I’ve bit the bullet, Jan. 15, 2011
Module 8 is now on its feet, after being upside down for a couple months. I’d finished it sometime in July, just when it got entirely too hot to do much fabrication outside, but because it was a closure module I needed it in place. Actually, I’d finished each end and left the one-third of it in the middle to be matched up from each end. Good thing, because I could take about eight inches more length for best alignment. Took me a while to drag modules 4 thru 7, which had been chained together by this time, eastward by eight inches. This also made the gap between modules 3 and 4 eight inches longer. I’ve heard this called a mini-mo, but since I lurk a bit on Free-mo I’ve heard the term applied to other, different little bridging devices. But, here, mini-mo it is. I can accommodate perhaps a 42″ or 48″ curve here with respectable tangents, when I get around to designing and building it.
But enough of this, back to module 8. Module 7 is Eureka before the curve, and it’s just a rectangular module with a kink in the east end, the same direction as the prototype on the east side of town. I barely, and I mean barely, have room for a team track on the town side of the station site, and there’s a passing track that won’t accommodate very much. Right now it has track centerlines marked, and some subroadbed glued down, and that’s it. But it’s accessible from both sides.
Module 9 is a big sweeping s-curve with about a 14″ tangent in the middle. West end of it is square and the track is tangent. East end is already partway into the curve headed for the river bridge, about where the now-gone overpass would be if I was modeling it. That leaves module 8, which has some 1/2″ plywood for sides and the remainder is 1/8″ wood, with 3/8″ behind it for strength in the flat stretches and a tight, maybe 12″, radius curve on the primary viewing side, which incidentally is the upriver side. I don’t think hardly any living being ever saw the railroad from this angle, since the dam and the US 54 bridge are on the downstream side, but it’s the configuration I’ll have to live with. Module 9 today has Homabed on it, while I made a trip to Lowe’s over the weekend for more 2x2s because all my legs aren’t long enough — two of the legs each on modules 8 and 9 are bracketed from the 1/8″ plywood because I couldn’t fit 1×2 stiffeners in those locations. Hard to explain, but it’s all (almost) worked out now.
I’ve also figured out where I’m going to cut away one side of module 9 to get some ground level below track level. I have entirely too many cuts and places where the scenery is higher than the track, and I need some the other way round. Besides, I want more opportunities to build those classic MoPac culverts, which in some places are now literally the last evidence that the MoPac was ever there.
Because I can’t get through the room easily with those modules in place, I plan to do the trackwork and the (crude) scenery with them in another room where I can have 360 degree access, as well as easy access to the rest of the railroad, then I’ll slide them back in. I did prove there was enough clearance to get them out past the existing railroad, so I know that works.
After these modules are in place, I’ll build the mini-mo that will also block access to the room where the supplies are, and to the straight line stairway. Duck-under, here we come. As it is, I’m training myself to duck under the finished sections of railroad that have about a 41″ clearance above the floor. Memo to self — get as much of that stuff done while I’m still flexible enough to be ducking under.
Come to Joplin, I’ll show you the prototype. Might even work in some photos of the layout, but those will have to be ad hoc since I’m afraid to stuff any more slides into the Power Point.
Ron Merrick
