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
I now have 15 feet of flextrack suspended along one side of the corridor. The hole in the wall now has the sides attached, and the top loosely set on but not attached. If that keeps down heat transfer from the attic to the train room, I’ll be happy. I’ll post photos soon.
This 15 feet of flextrack is headed toward empty air, for now, but I know I will need to end up at 46″ or so elevation above floor, and it’s about 40-1/2″ in the annex. So I planned for a continuous upgrade, and I’m at about two inches of lift in the fifteen feet. Only problem is — in adjusting the track that goes through the wall, I ended up with a half inch of downgrade, and now this subroadbed is pinned in place with the Masonite I used to wall in the passageway.
Kansas roadbeds have lots of vertical rise and fall, but I didn’t want this particular dip at this particular place, since I may need a lot more rise somewhere, before I’m done.
So I have an idea. I’ll get a very small, maybe 1/16″, extra-long drill bit and drill holes through the Homabed roadbed until I can separate about six to twelve inches of it from the subroadbed, and basically jack it upwards to where the grade is level. Never tried this before, but how hard can it be?* At least I have clear access to it from one side. I’ll be in Wichita tomorrow, so maybe I’ll visit my neighborhood Ace hardware and see what they have.
There’s not just fifteen feet of boring roadbed. I had built a small timber bridge from (ME?) (CVT?) bridge decking parts that I didn’t use in its originally intended position, so now it’s spliced in the middle of this run. Only about two feet of clearance from the bottom of the timbers to the plywood subroadbed, but in central Kansas that’s about all you get sometimes. Fit a piece of flextrack over it by cutting the proper number of ties out, and it dropped in perfectly. Then I just need a road crossing or two, maybe a cattle guard, and it becomes a pretty typical stretch of Kansas track.
Ron Merrick
* I believe these have been the last words of more than one unfortunate soul down through history…….
