A quick intro: I had an HO layout as a child/teenager; it was a cookie-cutter/cork-roadbed/flex-track kind of thing, with two-part-expanded-foam scenery. I didn't have a clue about prototypes/periods/etc., so it had a bit of everything. My granddad had a nice hand-laid-track layout, although it never got past the track stage. Anyway, it's 40 years later and I'm jumping back in. This time the plan is 1930's or 40's narrow gauge Colorado in the South Park / Leadville / Blue River area. Hand-laid track, spiked into wooden ties, most likely over homasote on a masonite spline sub-roadbed. I've got some plans that I'm fairly happy with, but they're on graph paper and they don't photograph terribly well. But I'll play around with getting them online a bit more sometime. Until then, here's a picture of the first benchwork module, and another ready for assembly. (I'm not really doing a modular layout, but my woodshop is in the basement and the layout is going in the attic, so I'm doing the benchwork in small pieces to carry up and assemble in the attic.) Cheers, Jeff.
While most of my curve easements will be done simply by offsetting the ends of the splines, I've got a few siding curves that are in yards which will have plywood under the homasote rather than splines. I decided to sketch some of those out full-scale just to make sure things would line up correctly. Seemed to go OK. I've got one crossing where a straight track crosses a curve (20" radius) at a 60ยบ angle. Anyone know if that's going to be an issue? (It's OK if it's fiddly to construct as it's not on the mainline and so can wait till I've got lots of experience with the rest of it.) Cheers, Jeff.
I found this blog: http://coxy.squarespace.com/coxys-n...d-diamond-crossings-for-the-mn-rr-part-1.html, where he covers creating a crossing where both sides are curved. Looks like a nice challenge once the "normal" stuff becomes run of the mill. Cheers, Jeff.
Looks like a tricky build, but I think it's do-able. Since you plan to hand-lay, you should be able to make it work.
The benchwork sections are coming along (I've got 8 done out of the 12), but it was getting a bit monotonous. So I temporarily clamped a couple of them together and installed some risers for the spline roadbed. It was certainly handier making the risers with the bench saw right behind me, so I might try and install most of them before the trip to the attic.
Looks promising! I have done cookie-cutter style roadbed before, and have worked with spline roadbed (older club), but never actually built any myself.
Got the benchwork frames complete. I'm only going to assemble the 2/3 of them that have risers to start with, but I wanted to lay them all out in the room for positioning. (After that the other 1/3 will go back down to the basement for riser installation.) Here it is on the floor in the attic. (No legs yet.)
