New Beginnings

 When I built the benchwork for the new railroad, I made several mistakes.

The basic framework is built of 1x2 dimensional lumber glued and screwed in an L shape to provide dimensional stability. It is fastened to an L channel, likewise made of 1x2 dimensional lumber, around the periphery of the room with legs at the critical junction points to keep everything flat and level. This has worked fairly well, but the mistakes soon followed.

At first I laid my 1/2 inch foam right on top of this framework. Of course it started to sag right away, I should have either used 1 inch foam, which is much more rigid, or used a plywood sub-surface. Fortunately I had not laid any track, so back to Big Orange I went.

This is where I made mistake number 2. Rather than use plywood I opted for 1/8 inch Masonite. In case you are not familiar with Masonite, it is a light flexible particle board type material, with the emphasis on flexible. It looked good initially, so I started laying out track.

It didn't take long before my track looked like a roller coaster. I tried shoring the track up with dimensional lumber underneath fastened to the framework, but had limited success. I though about installing more bracing from the underneath, but if I did so not only would I soon have way to much bracing, but said brace work would soon interfere with switch machines and wiring. To add to the toxic stew, anything that remained outside of the right-of-way would also undulate, which would make placing buildings (especially large ones) problematic.

And so this weekend I took all the track work up, peeled the foam from the Masonite, and pulled the Masonite from the framework. This included pulling all the feeder wiring out since it was zip tied to anchors fastened to the bottom side of the sub-surface. I then cut new 1/4 inch plywood and laid it atop the benchwork to flatten out.

Even though essentially I am starting all over, this has actually afforded me an opportunity to rethink part of what I am doing. For instance, the location of my coal washing plant doesn't leave enough room for the narrow gauge between the plant and the table edge. This was made necessary by the addition of a hill leading to the tunnel over the right loop, which was then followed by a larger hill up to the corner of the room where the peak was, followed by a long grade down the back side behind the main layout area.

The hill was made exclusively with Woodland Scenics risers to a 2 inch height at the peak. Through the tunnel the track was 1 inch above the surface. The up  grade started at the beginning of the curve to the turnaround section (defined as the part of the track immediately to the right of the town going all the way around to the left loop) and ended at the end of the straightaway behind the town. This hill limited my scenery potential behind the track work through town and added operational difficulties that I had not planned for.

With the restart I am now able to eliminate this hill (another mistake, I had not allowed room for any scenic work behind the risers, they were flat against the wall, which means they would have had nothing but sky behind them, which is not very prototypical) although I will allow for a slightly smaller rise (about a half inch) through the tunnel loop and along the wall behind the coal plant. This time I will leave room for scenery behind the risers, I won't have a further grade behind the coal plant, and it will drop much more quickly behind the town instead of taking up the full length which will allow for more scenery through town.

This in turn will allow me to move the coal plant back from the edge another 3-4 inches, which will allow plenty of room for the narrow gauge. I am changing up the standard gauge track work to join the coal plant siding back to the main just before the return loop curve, which will allow room to put a passenger station to serve the narrow gauge end-of-line, which will once again end in a turntable.

I am going to let the newly-cut plywood relax for a week, and next weekend I will apply a coat of paint and nail it down. After that, the planning for the new track will begin.