Hello All. Yes, another construction thread. But this one might be different because-- 1. I know almost nothing. Everything I know comes from Trainboard and my previous time in the hobby during the early 90s. So I'll be asking for help and comments. 2. I don't have a large budget, or for that matter, I don't have much budget at all. 3. In 2 or 3 previous tries, I've never made it to the scenery stage. So here goes. For the first time ever, I'm starting with a Trackplan. You can see it's evolution here: Help With Trackplan? - TrainBoard.com I think it's not bad... Don't hold me to it. There's a lot of guess work involved because I don't own many of the buildings yet. I'm working with existing benchwork from an ill-conceived non-planed-false-start that was torn up. I like the shape. The only problem is that the benchwork for the yard in lower left doesn't exist. So... my first project. Here's the spot where the new shelf will be. If you look close, you can see pencil marks and screw holes from another piece of benchwork that used to hang here (don't ask). Something interesting about the benchwork -- It's all made out of materials found around the garage. Left over stuff from projects through the years. Most of the supports are made of old bed slats that I saved after a bed was destroyed by kids. These brackets were originally made for the second level of the Old Pike (don't ask). They'll work fine for this. Now with a piece of Masonite for the shelf. Next up cutting some foam to fit. Then Fascia. Then the painting of said fascia. Then gluing foam. Then.... OMG I want to lay some track. "Patience Daniel-son" Dan
There can never be too many construction threads! I like the position of your yard; it very much reminds me of Woodsriver Yard on Paul Dolkos' old B&M layout. Jamie
Foaming at the mouth. Thanks Iron Horse. You too sandro schaer. Too true. Wow I'm honored to get a comment from Jamie of CSXDixieLine. Your thread and especially your blog have been a big inspiration to me. Some of my benchwork support brackets (not the ones pictured above) are based on the way you built yours. My work is not as neat as yours. I "measure twice and cut once", but nothing comes out straight or level. That's OK though, that way I know it's mine. Speaking if straight and level, I've got the 2" foam cut to fit (sort of). Here's a wide shot of the whole pike. I live in a 90 year old house. My wife would like me to point out that the curtains in this shot were chosen by a previous owner. Notice also Trainboard on the computer monitor. Remember how I said my benchwork was all old salvaged wood from around the house? Well, the foam is too. As a matter of fact, I know I've had the foam for a minimum of five years because I moved it here from the last old house. The problem with old foam is that for whatever reason, the sheets of the foam aren't the same thickness. This part of the underlying benchwork is nice and flat. But this is gonna show in N scale. A shot of the area for context. So.. options... The first thing I'm going to do is see if I have enough foam left over from the large section to make the shelf section. The problem then will be solved. If that doesn't work, I think I'll do some shimming under the thin stuff before gluing. What do you guys think? I have to go out of town for work. That little crack or bump or cracky bump is going to bug me the whole time. When I get this fixed, I'll be on to Fascia.
Why worry about it? Show me a prototype that is perfectly level and I'll give you a solution to make it perfectly level. But since I know you wont be able to find that example, I say just sand it out. To make it even more realistic, I would even suggest sanding huge spots down to create an overall wavy contour to the layout making your highest spots about 1/4th inch above your low spots, but also varying the up. So maybe one long stretch is at elevation 0, on one side it slowly rises to 1/4th inch, while on the other side it raises only 1/8th inch for a ways before eventually making it back to 1/4th inch. Then further down, maybe it dips back to 1/8th inch before connecting back up to the 1/4th inch from the first side. That's what I would do anyways.
That bump is perfect. Makes for a great "hump yard". Set the path and let em go. Test carefully. You might have to reduce the grade. Overall I love the work.
Don't worry about it either shim it up to level or sand some contours into your roadbed! Keep up the awesome work. I hope to be to benchwork in the next few weeks if I ever get anymore time to finish the drywall and ceiling in my new trainroom. JSL
looks good dogbones are the best for ashelf in my humble opinion. I like that you can reach the whole thing and you got 2 destinations for your cars to go to! Jay
Thanks for the encouragement Mike, Jay, JSL and Mark. I'm gonna fix the crack in the pink foam. For no other reason than to make laying the yard go smother there. Almost the whole yard goes over that crack. However, the whole layout will not be just a flat plain. Although I live on the Great Plains and am modeling that area, we'll throw some bumps in somewhere. So... what have I done since my last post? Well, I worked way too much, hung with the family, worked in the yard... Oh wait, you don't care, you want to see the train stuff. I got the fascia installed. Once again I scrounged materials. I used Masonite... bead-board that I had laying around. It's installed with the finished side facing in so the beads won't be scene. Man, I need to clean up under the pike. I will get that crap out of there before my next set of pics (if I type it maybe it will come true). Here's another angle. I'm pretty happy with it. It looks worse in person, you can see the seems and screws better. I did a quick sanding to knock the burs off. I have to fix something as usual. Some of the screws are not countersunk far enough. I was worried about popping through the thin Masonite with the countersink or the screw popping later under stress of the bends. There are specific places where screws can go because of the benchwork. They hold the bends and must be under a bit of presure. I'll need to pull the screws one at a time. Countersink further and replace the screws. I still don't know if I'll fill the screw heads with joint compound or leave them exposed and painted over. I'm leaning towards exposed because I really suck at mudding drywall and mudding a fascia is the same thing. I also don't want the dust of sanding. On the backdrop, which was constructed similarly to the fascia, screws have popped and cracks have formed. Which brings me to the question of this post -- What should I use to glue to the current backdrop? I want something seamless, glue-able, and taller than the current one. Is the rubber or plastic roof flashing expensive? Could I use a roll of heavy wall paper on its side and paint over the pattern? Ideas? Last note (I know too much text). I had my 10 year old daughter help me hold the fascia while adjusting and attaching. She had fun and is excited to help me paint. I was surprised and it was very cool. Dan
mud, dust, primer and paint Hello All. I made a trip to the home improvement store, looking around for something to extend and repair the backdrop with and didn't find much. I decided to bite the bullet and fix it. Last time I used some old wood filler and no tape for the seam and it failed. This time I bought tape and joint compound. Side Note: if you see a joint compound that claims to "reduce air born dust by 60%" and is a little bit more expensive, just buy the cheep stuff, I couldn't tell the diff: I got the fascia screws fixed and the screws and seams filled and sanded. Then the fascia primed. And the backdrop painted. The backdrop is a little short, but I'm gonna live with it. I mocked up what should be my tallest building (at least on the country side) to show you. Track level closeup: A little above track level and a little wider angle: I think I can live with it. In pics I can always extend it with Photoshop. I'm trying to decide if I should try to paint some clouds or lighten it at the horizon. I think I'll just keep it solid. My art skills are not high. Next is painting the fascia. I think I have some dark blue paint laying around, left-over from painting the boys room, it's pretty close to MoPac blue. I might use that or just spend seven bucks and get some dark "outfield fence" green. Not sure yet. After that -- gluing the foam down and then actually laying some track. I turned 40 last week end and my wife gave me a Play Station 3, so my progress on the pike may slow down some. HD video games... Holy Crap, we've come a long way from the old Atari 2600 days. Dan
You probably don't want to hear this, but I think I would re-do the backdrop if I were you. Once you've elevated everything with the foam, it looks pretty short. When we work too hard in our minds to justify keeping something we're not all that happy with, it usually means we'll regret it some day. Why don't you just move the whole backdrop up a couple of inches? (Or however thick your foam is). I love your trackplan. It's just great. And your fascia work is really nice, too.
Dan, I was really glad (!) to see that the curtains were tied up in the last picture. (Your wife sounds like my wife). Just kidding, Ha Ha Ha. I'm glad to follow your progress and learn from you. Most of the layouts on this forum just leave me in awe. I'm getting ready to start my first layout after about 40 years of thinking about it. I have a space and my wife just gave me a budget . Now I just have to get the honey-do list complete so I can start. Probably won't start until this winter but I'll keep monitoring the TrainBoard for inspiration and great ideas. Markttmi.
Painted and Happy Thanks-a-lot Markttmi for the kind words. Some of the construction threads on Trainboard I consider How To threads and I LOVE them. If I see The New Oakville Sub - TrainBoard.com on top of the list I get excited because I know I'll be inspired. And if I see New Layout: The CSX Dixie Line - TrainBoard.com on top, I probably am gonna learn something. This thread isn't really a How To, but more of a How Not To or a How Should I because I plan to ask a lot of questions and I haven't done a lot of these things so I'm bound to screw them up. That's the fun though. Chaya -- I here ya and I really agree... but I'm gonna leave the backdrop for now. Mainly because I want to move on and get some track down and trains running. I'll probably regret it but maybe I'll fix it in a few years... about the time when it's time to tear this one down and build the next LOL. Well, I got the painting done. I hate painting. Did I mention I hate painting? I think it looks really good though. In the pics the brown is still a bit wet. It should end up a little darker and a little less shiny. I snap pics quick with a cheap camera. I'm really happy with the way the fascia turned out. Sort of happy with the way the backdrop turned out. And relatively happy with how the foam turned out. The foam should end up mostly covered in the end so it doesn't really matter. The foam is just sitting there so the next job is to glue it down. After that... wait for it... that's right TRACK!!! Well really, roadbed and something else that I'm probably not thinking of and then track. I can't wait. Too bad a really heavy work schedule will get in the way the next week or so. Gotta pay the bills. Dan
We love constuction/progress threads on Trainboard! Looks like your going to have a fantastic layout. Thanks for sharing!
Looks like great progress so far!! Keep up the good work & don't get discouraged. IMHO - Only about 1 in 50 of us is a pro, the rest are just like you and me........learning as we go, and struggling to do our best with what we have :tb-cool:
long overdue post Wow... It's been a while. A month and a day to be exact. Thanks everyone for the nice encouraging words. I've gotten some stuff done and photographed most of it. I've been busy actually working on the pike and haven't updated the thread (the new PlayStation has taken my computer time) and I'm really busy at work, so I haven't been able to update on the bosses time either. I've gotten more done than I'll share today, but five posts and 20 pics might be a bit much. I hope to keep updating the next few days to catch up. I glued the foam down and fixed the uneven crack. I used Liquid Nails and spread it a bit with a notched trowel. A pic of the uneven crack. A piece of cardboard from a shoebox that sat about three feet from the layout seemed to be a good fit for a shim. So... foam came up. Cardboard went down. Glue was spread. Foam back down. Weights on foam. Glue drying. I think the crack is pretty even now. I'll need to do some fill work with some JC here and in a few other places. Next update: Print out and lay out a full sized track plan. Thanks, Dan
