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 had previously built a main track and siding through the corridor that connects the new layout room to the older part of the upstairs. Now for the first time, I’ve built new roadbed in the place of old.
Originally, there was a storage room that was unclimatized, L-shaped, five feet wide at the top of the stairs. I’d cut a hole through the wall to bring the railroad into this room and connect at the opposite end with another hole in the wall that led back to the rest of the layout. I had gotten as far as L-girder benchwork and Homasote on this portion of the layout, and there was track on part of it. When we did the expansion, about four feet of L-girder at the very corner was demolished to make room for the doorway into the new train room. This is where I’ve cut through the wall to make a connection on the opposite side.
Now I have replaced the old heavy 3/4″ plywood with 1/2″ solid Homasote with a construction similar to the modules, namely 1/4″ plywood with 1×2 at the edges for stiffness, but resting on the old risers and L-girder framework. I’ve laid Homabed directly on this surface, which is how the connection extension is laid, and tied it in at the south end (railroad west). There is a nice pair of 36″ radius reverse curves to line up with the roadbed outside the wall. Track will be coming soon.
Outside the wall will be a challenge. This roadbed exists, but there has never been track on it. I added a ceiling fan to this area, which is the upstairs landing for the ‘interior’ stairway, so that made it slightly less unbearably hot here and reduced the spider growth somewhat. But I’m inclined to think I really ought to enclose this section with Plexiglas or something. The reason this area is important is that it’s the last gap between the new railroad and the old. The old railroad is frankly nothing more than a place to store cars now, but it will fulfill my original plans to tie the new in with the old — in a totally different way than I had envisioned when I started this project.
Ron Merrick
