Reply To: I’ve bit the bullet, Jan. 15, 2011

[David Boeschen]

My railroad space is built as two rooms, since I made use of the existing stud walls and I wasn’t enamored of the idea of my roof falling in just to open up the space to one big room. One is 13′ wide and the other 16′. The narrower room connects to the outside world via a corridor, and the wall between the rooms has two doorways in it, one near each end. I’ve been working in the narrower room, which I’ve called the country room because there’s track in it representing the cities of Yates Center and Eureka, plus a couple of other noteworthy locales and the storage tracks in Sedgwick County that are a mile or so east of the end of Wichita 25th St. yard. The other room is going to have trackage in and around Wichita.

In order to get more operations going, I had built a storage yard which is really temporary trackage. That yard is two modules, both 8′ long, which convinced me that a full 8′ is probably not that good an idea. The storage yard ended up with seven tracks, code 83 flextrack with a wye at the beginning of the yard throat at each end, so there are essentially no through tracks. The center track runs through one leg of the wye turnouts at each end. The trackage is completely symmetrical, although there’s probably no real need for this. So far I’ve stuffed about 120 cars into it. Each end is electrically separate, with insulated joints on each rail at the joints between the two modules.

Because I’d intended to cut through the wall to connect the rooms, I had built the frame for a module that would be a mirror image of module 14, but after bringing the frame up to the room, I had decided that the angle and radius was not exactly what I wanted. So this frame sat on the floor for a year. I did designate it as module 15.

Finally, I realized that I could build out the storage yard and use this ill-designed module to at least connect it to the rest of the railroad, so I could at least run out and back on it. In order to do this, I had to design a mini-mo to go between the two. The mini-mo doesn’t have legs, but is supported by clamps from the ends of the modules adjacent to it. It’s about 32″ long, 3/4″ birch, with 3/4″ endplates only as wide as the ends of the mini-mo, which are slightly less than 6″. The track on it is flextrack, tangent at each end with a 42″ radius curve in the middle. There will be full wiring under this thing, with a ‘cable trench’ to protect it. Just like every problem is a nail if the only tool you have is a hammer, in my case every solution to a problem is something that I can cut on the table saw.

So this weekend I cut the holes in the wall, using an NMRA gauge as a template. Oops – even though I’d measured at least once, the two track centerlines ended up about 3/4″ off. Not to worry, I rotated module 15 a couple of degrees counterclockwise, and glued a couple of small shims onto the end and side of the module where they stood away from the wall, so at least it would be braced. I lined the “tunnel bore” with 1/8″ birch plywood, after installing a floor of 1/4″. I was able to use a piece of roadbed to support the flextrack, which fits between the ends of rail on the module ends.

So far I’ve rolled a few cars over it. My test train includes the longest cars I have, a 75′ pig flat and a 65′ gon, with some 50′ boxcars for eaves-width clearance. Haven’t tried a passenger car yet, which probably will have clearance issues even if these freight cars don’t. There could be 85′ pig flats in my future, but for my time frame there was nothing longer.

I can do some beveling of the walls, if I need to, since the pinch points are at the ends of the “tunnel”. At one point I thought I might put a smaller hole, say with a piece of PVC pipe lining it, under the main bore to accommodate the wiring, but instead I drilled 1/2″ holes in the tabletop on the back side and put the jumpers through there, and left a ‘ditch’ alongside the track to snake the wiring through. There’ll be trees or something to hide the wires from view.

My track construction is CVT tie strip, which is laid right up to the end of the module. The module rails end about 1 inch or so, or slightly more, back from the end and I fit jumper rails between. Then the rail joiners on at least one end, usually both, can retract so as to drop the jumper rails in, which requires carving no more than two ties. Each rail is filed on the end, bottom, sides of the rail foot and beveled slightly on the rail foot, for the jumpers, so they’ll go on easily. I’ve also used about 4″ of tangent at the end of most modules, but a few have a curve that transects the module joint and not even on centerline, which obviously makes them a married set. A few of the other modules could end up being rearranged if I move the railroad, since they’re not exactly in their proper order on the railroad, so I tried to accommodate that. I’m definitely not Free-mo compatible, but I didn’t like several of their standards.

This is actually the second hole I’ve cut in the new walls, but the other one is just now starting to be connected to anything. The old railroad has several holes in the wall, so this is not new to me. At least I was able to avoid one hole I had thought I’d need — that one was described last year.

Ron Merrick