Track work for Adena - Part 3

With the west end turnouts all set I can begin work on the east end yard ladder. My goal is to place the first two mainline turnouts and then connect the main though Adena. Then I can lay the seven yard tracks building of the mainline route.

As you can see below, the valuation map of the west end of Adena yard is fairly straight with a gentle curve to the right after the bridge.

East end of Adena Yard. Cropped image from RailsandTrails.com

My version of the yard ladder had to be severely curved left in order to fit along the wall. To help with planning I mapped the ladder out with printable Fast Track templates on a large piece of poster board.

The first turnout is a #8 30"/40" radius which I had already hand built from a paper template. The other turnouts I needed were five #8 32"/25" radius and one #6. Since I knew I needed at least six #8 32"/25" turnouts (one for the Adena wye) I felt I might as well order a new fixture from Fast Tracks.

Fast Track's Curved #8 32"/25" radius turnout

With the fixture in hand I made quick work of making what I needed and started committing the paper template to my rubber roadbed. First up was the #8 40"/30" turnout which beings the main yard. I used a silver sharpie to mark the final position of the turnout and to aid in placing the wood ties. The black sharpie is for marking rail to be trimmed.

In the below photo the first two mainline turnouts on the east end are in place and the ties have been glued down.

With the eastern mainline turnouts in place it was time to lay the mainline to connect to the other end and establish the curves through the yard. The "Fruit Can Express", as my son calls it, has arrived in Adena to help glue down the main. 

With the main line down I started forming the yard tracks using the orange 3D printed track spacers to maintain a 2 inch spacing. The marks at the bottom of the below photo are the outside rail location for each yard track.

The "Fruit Can Express" parks on yard track 1 during gluing.

While waiting for the adhesive caulk to dry in between gluing sessions, I began soldering feeders on completed tracks. This way my eager helper could test finished tracks afterwards.

Below, more yard tracks getting spaced and ready for gluing. In all Adena yard is eight tracks wide. I'll also note that for the yard tracks I cut out every 6th or 7th tie and re spaced the ties to give the track more of a secondary look. I apparently had forgotten how much work this was and my thought not to do it again but I'm glad I did.

View from the east end of Adena Yard.

The east yard ladder is almost complete in this photo.

The last switch in the main yard ladder only needed to be a straight #6 since the curve was nearly complete at that point.

Here's the last turnout for the shorter two south tracks in place. I found a low spot which I filled with flexible spackle and then stained black with my tie wash.

Finally in the below photo all east yard turnouts are in place and stained. I even organized my construction mess a little bit for the picture. 

I'll lay the two shorter yard tracks on the right once I have their opposing turnouts installed. But will have to wait for the next part in this series.

- Quick links

Track work for Adena - Part 1
Track work for Adena - Part 2
Track work for Adena - Part 3
Track work for Adena - Part 4
Track work for Adena - Part 5

Track work for Adena - Part 2

Once the main line turnouts were laid in place in Track work for Adena Part 1, I turned my attention to the west yard ladder. These were also all #6 turnouts like on the mainline.

In the above photo the second turnout's ties are being glued down. With this turnout I changed tactics and waited to glue in the headblock ties until the next turnout in line's position was marked and cut to fit. The orange 3D printed track spacer helps maintain the 2 inch track separation.

Getting the rest of the yard ladder turnouts position marked for tie placement.

Tie strips have been glued down. Immediately afterward I lay a straightedge down on top of the ties  to hold them in place as I remove the painters tape. Then I lay the turnout on top of the ties and make adjustments before the adhesive caulk sets up.

Here's how things size up with other three turnouts fit into place. I'll spike them down after staining and filling the gaps between turnouts with extra Micro Engineering plastic ties.

The above photo looks east at Adena and shows the progress so far.

Up to this point I did not stain any of the turnout ties because I was eventually going to paint all my track work with either an airbrush or my trusty Camo Brown spray cans. Since I wasn't sure how soon that would be I decided to give them a quick wash of alcohol diluted India Ink in the meantime. I also went back and stained the other turnouts I already had in place.

I'm pretty pleased  how the India Ink wash turned out. It almost made me wish I had hand laid all the track with wood ties but I'll save that level of crazy for other people.

The Fast Tracks turnout building tools pull double duty as weights to hold the rails in place as I started to spike them down.

I use Micro Engineering small spikes with a bit of the spike head nipped off with my rail cutters. The pliers are nothing special, just the Crescent brand you can find at Home Depot in a 2-pack with cutters that are almost identical to orange handled Xuron sprue nippers.

I only spike one set of ties in between PC board ties on the turnouts and anywhere else the turnout seems to flex or lift from the ties.

I'm surprised how quick this step can go, and with a steady hand only a few spikes have managed teleport into another dimension.

Next up the east end curved yard ladder.


- Quick links

Track work for Adena - Part 1
Track work for Adena - Part 2
Track work for Adena - Part 3
Track work for Adena - Part 4
Track work for Adena - Part 5

Track work for Adena - Part 1

As hinted at in the last Wordless Wednesday, track laying in Adena has finally begun.

I'd been delaying track work on Adena mainly due to needing to curve the east end of the yard which continues through the bridge at the end of the yard ladder. After I recently relaid the curve leading to this bridge and glued it down, I knew I could continue westward with track construction.

Most of us when trying to build from the prototype must at times make compromises due to space or operational constraints. The large wye at the west end of Adena plus the the yard would fit with reasonable compression along a 30 foot wall. Unfortunately my basement walls are about 25' long, so the best way I found to fit all of Adena was to curve the east end of the yard. The wye and the west end of the Adena are a signature scene so I wanted to preserve that side as much as possible to match the prototype.

The two turnouts that were laid first anchor the main line through Adena, the start of the wye for the Adena Branch and the west yard ladder.

The turnouts are constructed using Fast Tracks #6 fixtures and Mt. Albert ties which are glued down with Dap Clear Adhesive Caulk. After the caulk had set the turnout was spiked down every few ties with Micro Engineering small spikes.

In the above photo DAP adhesive caulk has been spread for the rubber sheeting I use for roadbed in large areas like a yard.

The rubber sheeting as been cut and rolled flat. I found with the rubber material you don't want to accidentally stretch it out too much when rolling it out or it will pull on the foam.

The next two switches that serve as anchors for the main line are the lead for the Adena Mill and team track, and a switch for two more yard tracks and the rip track. In the photo above, I'm making final adjustments to the wood ties that have just been set into the adhesive caulk. I built my own jigs to make turnout tie strips faster. I've since figured out to delegate this task to my son to get him involved more in construction now that he's older.

The turnouts have been spiked down and in the background the team track and Mill tracks have been loosely added. Even though I'll eventually paint all the track work I meant to stain the ties with a India ink wash but in my excitement to get track laid I forgot.

I've used a large sheet of construction-like paper to help design the curved east end yard ladder. Along with Fast Tracks printable templates I also used 3D printed track spacers to help layout the yard tracks. These 2 inch track spacers were found on Thingverse.com and are free to download and use for yourself. I had my work place print several for me which have been great for the straightaways. I ended up using a manual 2.25 inch spacing on the curves which allowed Brendan's larger modern equipment to pass each other and didn't wreck my plans for this area too badly.

Here's a closer view of the 3D printed track spacers in action.

3D printing 2 inch HO track spacers

And a photo of them being printed. Each one takes about 30-40 minutes. The library I work at only charges $1 an hour for printer time and materials so the wait is well worth it. While the print resolution is not that great for models, it's just fine for tools and other things like servo brackets.

Coming up soon, more track work...


- Quick links

Track work for Adena - Part 1
Track work for Adena - Part 2
Track work for Adena - Part 3
Track work for Adena - Part 4
Track work for Adena - Part 5

More Curved Turnouts

Most model layouts are challenged when it comes to having straight runs and my layout is certainly no exception. Unlike the prototype both my Adena and Pine Valley Yards needed to bend around a basement wall and also required a few curved switches to further conserve space.

To finish the west end yard ladder of Pine Valley I needed two curved switches, a #8 off the main and a #6 in the ladder itself. After about 20+  template built turnouts and 6 or so made "freehand" on Fast Track's printable templates, I now feel pretty good about being able to make any turnout I may need.

Here's the mainline #8 curved turnout for Pine Valley under construction.

Even though I feel this turnout may be my best freehand attempt yet, I still need to build 6 more smaller #8's for Adena Yard's curved east end ladder. For the sake of speed, accuracy and the likely hood of using more curved switches on the branchlines I may just end up purchasing the Fast Track template for the #8 30/24 curved turnout.

Construction Report: June 12, 2017 Summer Slowdown

Layout work has been confined to building turnouts and laying track for Pine Valley Yard when time allows. This typical summer slowdown can be blamed as warmer weather, family trips and Little League baseball games all compete for time.

Because part of Pine Valley Yard ducks under the stairs (necessary evil and not a big deal as there shouldn't be much switching here), I knew I needed to have the track preformed and ready to glue down. To achieve this I didn't glue down the foam layout sections right away so they could be removed and rearranged on the floor. While on the floor I transferred my track plan to the foam and also to a paper template for cutting the rubber roadbed sheeting.

I then curved the code 70 Micro Engineering flex track (which is easier said than done) for the area that will run under the stairs.

The track then was painted with the same Rust-Oleum Camouflage Brown I used in my test scenery module. I taped off the ends so I could solder wire feeders and allow rail joiners to slip on the rail ends easier.

A simple block of wood was used to wipe the paint off the rail tops as the paint dried.

When the foam layout sections were glued down with foam paneling adhesive it was only natural the joint under the stairs was not level. With an agile hand I used DAP lightweight spackling to level the seam and fill any gaps.

Next the rubber roadbed sheeting was glued down with DAP Clear Kitchen & Bathroom Adhesive Sealant. The track plan was transferred to it with a silver Sharpie.

In the photo below I gathered all my tools I've used while laying track. I only soldered a few flex track joints, mainly the track labeled Y3. While I don't expect a lot of seasonal expansion in a layout built from mainly foam, rubber and caulking, I'd rather error on the side of caution and leave small gaps in between rails to allow some movement.

The Soup Can Express arrives in Dillonvale indicating some freshly glued track. All my track is glued down with a thin spread out bead of DAP Clear Kitchen & Bathroom Adhesive Sealant.

I built six #6 turnouts for the east yard ladder and engine terminal leads and used one previous built turnout for the Grocery Distributor spur at Dillonvale. For the east yard ladder turnouts I used the laser cut QuickSticks that came with the Fast Tracks #6 kit to see what those were like. These were glued to the assembled switch with a contact adhesive, then the sides were snapped off. I guess I was a little stingy with the glue as I had to apply more adhesive in a few spots where the ties fell off after removing the side supports.

How does all the junk pile up so quickly?

Over all I like the Quicksticks a lot for the time savings compared to working with individual ties but I got into the hand built turnout game to save money. The Quicksticks are $7.35 each and the equivalent of individual ties are probably under a dollar. With Fast Track's purchase of Mt. Albert Scale Lumber they'll get my money either way.

Here's a turnout with Mt. Albert HO scale cross ties stained with Minwax Walnut color and spiked down. A lesson learned here is since I'll end up spray painting the track my camo brown color anyways, I'll skip the Minwax stain next time. Perhaps if I know I won't paint the track in an area for a long time, I'll stain the ties with just a strong India ink wash. 

Also I could probably use a few more spikes to hold the rails down since the PC board ties don't drop low enough to touch the adhesive caulk. And yes, the wood tie/caulking/rubber sheet does hold spikes very well, I tested this about two years ago and the results have held up over that time.

To speed the process using individual ties I made a jig to help cut and arrange the ties. I then used painters tape to collect the ties and then set them in the caulking as seen below.

Either using the Fast Tracks quick sticks or hand laying ties, I've really enjoyed this part of track laying. I've often joked that I felt like the skills needed to hand lay track and turnouts must involve some kind of voodoo or black magic, but as with most things once you try it yourself it's not that bad.

Having everything fit together according to plan so far is a great feeling. There's some unusually hot weather for June coming in the forecast in the next few days, hopefully I'll get some more time in the cool basement for some trackwork.

Wordless Wednesday #127

Wordless Wednesday #115

Fast Tracks Curved #6 36"/24" paper template

Back to Building Turnouts

Now that I'm getting close to laying track at Pine Valley I knew I should start building the odd ball turnouts I'll need.  Lately I've actually been looking forward to building a few turnouts, I've discovered it to be a very relaxing and meditative process.

Instead of "warming up" first by building a turnout in my Fast Tracks #6 assembly fixture, I just dove right in on the "freehand" paper template since it was a pretty straight forward #8 turnout.

Finished!

Although I spent about a total of two hours, construction went smoothly and the the turnout performs flawlessly.  As a side note, I finally replaced the container of flux as the lid was getting impossible to remove due to flux on the cap threads. This jar of Radio Shack flux dates back to my High School days so I'd say it had a good life. I found a nice sized replacement at a local craft store and transferred the still good contents, maybe it will last me another 25 years.

Unfortunately the next night I started on a curved #6 and that didn't go so well. When rolling a truck through the diverging route, the lead wheel will pick the frog point and try to reroute. I've tried filing various frog rails and even unsoldering the whole frog point and moving it in a bit with no change. There were also some gauge issues which I believe is from using curved rail that was made for a different turnout that I never started. I'm torn between trying again to fix it or trash it as a source for guard rails and move on.

The offending #6 50/30 radius.

Ether way I decide, live and learn.