Category Archives: Roadbed and Track

January – It’s Been a Busy Month

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January has been a great month for railroading.  I’ve been attending events for the past three weekends, and have yet another this Saturday coming.

The Crescent City Model Railroad Club in New Orleans held their annual open house early in the month.  They’re in the process of converting their layout to DCC operation, and since the layout would be down, they decided to remodel several major sections.  Wayne Robichaux and I went down to inspect their progress and also to hit the few remaining hobby shops in the area.  Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a single decent model railroad shop left in south Louisiana.  A few shops we hit had nice selections of Lionel and similar, but us “scale” guys are left in the cold.

The following weekend Ron Findley and I drove over to Hattiesburg, Mississippi to attend the annual banquet of the Mississippi Great Southern Chapter of the NRHS.  Those folks put on a fine get-together.  There were several vendors displaying their wares, the dinner was good, and the guest speaker was quite interesting.  It was good seeing old friends and acquaintances over there.

This past Saturday several of us drove over to Covington to operate on Lou Schultz’s C&O layout.  Overall the session went well, there were plenty of snacks to chow down on, and as usual, it was good to meet with fellow model railroaders.

And finally, this Saturday, January 26th, there will be the Train Day at the Library event at one of the local libraries here in Baton Rouge.  There will be numerous displays about railroading (prototype and modeling), possibly a display layout, and many slide presentations by Forrest Becht, a noted railfan and photographer.

Oh, BTW . . . I actually managed to get a bit of track laid on the Louisiana Central.  I’ve been struggling back in the corner of the room it seems forever, but we’re finally getting rail down.  I’m using Atlas code 83 track and switches for my hidden track (which is what I’m laying presently), and I’m not too impressed with the construction of the switches with regards to soldering jumper wires to them.  Soldering rail feeders isn’t too big a deal, but soldering jumpers to the points is!  They’re just formed sheet metal and I found it quite difficult to tack a wire to the lower portion of the point so it would clear wheel flanges.  Despite my efforts, I had to do considerable filing afterwards to clear the NMRA gauge nubs.  And the frog . . . what a pain!  The frog doesn’t accept solder well, but there is a small tab with a hole sticking out to one side of the frog.  I couldn’t find my taps, so drove to a friend’s house for him to tap the holes for me.  Then I screwed a 1-72 screw to each and added a nut to the bottom.  I placed a dab of solder below the nut so it will never come loose, then soldered a jumper to the screw.  Despite the precautions I took (good hot iron with freshly tinned tip, and a fast in and out technique) the thin plastic surrounding the tab melted away and the cast frog on one switch came loose from its mounting in the switch.  Now I need to figure out what kind of adhesive I need to use to adhere metal to slippery plastic so as to permanently reattach the frog on that switch.

That’s about it for now.  My main focus on the layout will be to get track laid, hopefully at a steady rate.  Leave a comment if you have any questions or suggestions.

-Jack

Some Thoughts About Roadbed

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As the basic frame of the benchwork progresses, my thoughts are turning to the next step which is the track structure: sub-roadbed and support risers, and the roadbed itself.  For the sub-roadbed, I plan to use a mixture of flat plywood (some of which will be installed “cookie cutter” fashion) and Masonite splines.  All will be topped by Homasote roadbed.  I’ve used Homasote for many years and I’ve always had good results with it.  I have a single sheet and also plenty of scraps from my old layout that will get used, but plenty more will be needed.  A friend has several sheets that didn’t get used on his present layout that he’s willing to let go, and the last time I checked, there was a lumber yard about 60 miles from me that stocked it.  Hopefully they still do.

The two major complaints that I’ve read about Homasote over the years are expansion/contraction from the humidity, and the dust generated when cutting it.  I’ve never had significant problems with it in the former even though I don’t bother to seal it.  As for the latter, I have never let the dust deter me.  I just vacuum the area immediately after cutting to minimize the mess.  I’ll try to do major cutting outdoors and I’m also going to try using the knife type sabre saw blades if I can ever find them.  I’m told that they greatly reduce the dust produced, although they cut a good bit slower.

On my former layout, after the track was down, I had gone back with a router and cut bevels on each side, creating the ballast shoulders.  I did the cuts freehand and they came out rather well, but the process was slow and tedious.  I’ve read an article from a fellow that makes his own Homabed (a commercial Homasote roadbed that has been planed down for consistent thickness, and has beveled edges) and I’ve thought about trying to produce some small amount of that to see if it’s worth the effort.  The commercial Homabed is quite expensive and frankly, is out of my budget.

For the yard areas, I’ll just laminate sheets of Homasote to the plywood sub base and the track will not have the ballast slopes.  I want the yard and industrial trackage set in a mixture of ballast and dirt, really buried into the ground.  I can cut some shallow ballast slopes or small ditches along the perimeter of the yard area using my router as I’ve done before.

I’ll post more comments when I get to that step in the work.

-Jack