I’m taking a bit of a breather from railroad construction this week.  The benchwork supporting structure is complete except for the section that will cross past the room doorway.  Sub-roadbed and trackage are next up.

Last week I was fortunately spared any significant damage wrought by the storm Isaac.  Winds in my neck of the woods were not as severe as in the earlier hurricanes Katrina and Gustav.  But the rains . . . I don’t recall such a slow moving storm and the sheer quantity of constant rain!  My biggest fear was from ground saturation and the resultant tree toppling in the wind.  But no trees came down by me, and I only had to concern myself with a massive clean-up of leaves and branches.

But back to the railroad: now that I’ve reached the roadbed stage, I thought I should slow down a bit and think through what I’ll be doing, and where to start.  I have a ton of old material and pieces-parts from old layouts that I’ve saved and I’ve been digging out those boxes and caches of material.  Obviously I want to use as much of this existing stuff as possible before heading out to the lumber yard.

Yards and other flat areas containing industry will be built using plywood topped by Homasote.  This has worked well for me in the past, so I see no reason to do otherwise.  I’m still teetering with regard to the mainline.  I’m strongly tempted to try Masonite spline construction for the sub-roadbed, something I’ve never used before.  My biggest concern using this method though is with the layout of the track.  I want the track very precisely placed in accordance with my plan and I’m still scratching my head over just how to precisely plot track centerlines when you have nothing to work on except a bunch of skinny joists spanning the L-girders.  I’ve read several articles on spline sub-roadbed and they all were very terse on that aspect of the task.  I suspect from what I’ve read that spline users tend to be satisfied as long as the track runs approximately where they want it to go.  But I come from an engineering background and I have this hang-up about wanting everything precise (which I find quite difficult in many of the things to do with layout construction).

I’ll likely start with the roadbed and track that will be hidden along the walls of the room.  That seems to make sense since it will be the most difficult to access later.  It will also give me a chance to “practice” my construction technique with risers, sub-roadbed and track laying.  With most every task I’ve done in the room construction, and lately the benchwork construction, I’ve eventually worked out a method that produces an acceptable result while at the same time cutting construction time and effort.  I trust this will also happen during this next phase.  I’ve not done any of this construction since back in the early nineties , so it’s really like learning all over again.

Once some track is down, I’ll post photos on the website for those of you following the construction.  I should have something to see later in this month.

-Jack