Base Earth Color, Roadbed, and Track

I'm going to post this update with things grouped together, but I seem to have developed a "random" style to completing things, and so it's not necessarily in the order that I've done them. The reason for this is because I start to do a task, the step I think I'm on, and then realize I need to do another part of the layout first before I can finish the task I'm doing. And of course when I start doing this other thing, I realize I need to do some other things. And so on. As long as everything is getting done, I'm not too worried about it.

You saw the plaster coat from last time. It is now painted my base desert earth color.

Here's a closeup looking around the bend in the lower right hand side of the layout. (Side note: I should give this a name perhaps). You can see that in addition to painting the plaster coat, I've also laid down cork roadbed for the track to be layed on.

The scenic location and look that I've picked for the railroad I've narrowed down to the northern part of Arizona. Here are some shots about what I have in mind for the terrain theme for this layout:

I've been asked if there will be cactus -- Yes, there will be a little cactus here and there, but not overwhelmingly so (as in a stereotypical way).

The cork roadbed extends all the way into what will become the tunnel.

And of course how could it be a model railroad layout without track? I've begun to lay this section of track.

The track and ties are held in place with one of my favorite materials -- blue painter's masking tape (the low-tack stuff). The rails are pre-bent before installation, but are still a touch springy. In these cases I've started using pins to help them keep their shape while I work on them.

Leilani recorded a short video of how exactly the track is made, for those of you who were wondering.

Here the subtly rusted tippers sit, waiting for a train to pick them up for the next ore haul...

I've begun to build the tunnel liners as well. These will be basically cardboard, that's painted black, which will serve as the walls of the tunnel. Here they're just raw cardboard, and I'm dry fitting them to make sure the train can pass through without banging into the walls.

For this particular tunnel, I'm planning on building a wooden tunnel entrance and wooden tunnel lining, like you'd expect from a mining railroad.

Lastly, I layed out some more roadbed, leading into the tunnel on the left, along with dry fitting some of the track.

Here's the overall progress of the layout up to this point...

First Running Track

TADA! It's not an update about the benchwork.

I got tired of having pieces of wood and no trains so I started to put together some of the trackwork for the LANI railroad. I started on the section that will be mostly inside a tunnel for obvious reasons.

The track is made by soldering the metal rail to a PCB tie which is a wafer like material that has a coat of copper on the outside. The rail is soldered to the copper surface and held in place quite nicely. This is as opposed to using miniatures spikes and spiking the rail down with those (uh, I'd rather solder, thanks).

After a decent section of rail has been soldered down, gaps are cut in the copper surface of the ties to not short circuit the electrical connection. The gaps can either be cut with a small triangle hobby file or by tapping a cut-off wheel from a dremel on the surface (you can guess which I did).

When all is said and done, this section of track will actually be coming out of a tunnel right about... here. The area where the tweezers and tools are sitting right now will be a small town.

I put together a short video of the train (if you can call that black chassis without a shell a train) running on the track...

This handlaid track has been brought to you by....

The letter U...

The number 8....

And this soldering iron...

On a side note, I took a picture of my overall work area, and realized a number of things I have were given to me by friends and family...

Custom Sized Turnouts in HOn30

The two things that drew me to handlaying track, particularly turnouts was...

1. Cheaper -- Hand laid turnouts only end up using about $2-$3 in materials, as opposed to spending $18-30 for a store-bought turnout.
2. Custom -- You can make things that you can't buy

Both reasons were important things for me as I'm building the LANI R&R. I'm already running a small layout with tight turns and I needed turnouts that can keep up.

On the left is a #4 turnout which is about the smallest turnout that's available commercially for HOn30 (and more or less for N scale). On the right is a #2-ish (around there) turnout that was created off of a template I drew on a computer.

Understanding, it's limited in operation. Larger equipment (engines with more than 6 wheels) will probably not be able to make that tight of a turn. But since I'm only planning on running 0-4-0 and 0-6-0 engines on LANI R&R, it works perfect. The main difference aside from the height is the angle at which the deviating track deviates away.

Hand-Built HOn30 Turnout

My order from Fast Tracks finally came in today (from air mail canada). I had ordered some PCB cross ties for laying my own track. And of course since my order from Nscalesupply.com came in last week, it was time to try it all out (after a quick trip to the hardware store for some acid paste flux).

And the result is....

TADA!

Three and a half hours, 1 piece of rail, a small bit of solder, and a lot of filing! It's my first hand-laid track ever (and it happens to be a turnout at that).

It's really bad. The main track flangeway guard rail isn't fully laid flat. The switch points aren't quite the right shape to make a nice contact. And the frog point is kinda wonky. BUT it is in gauge, and the deviating track's guard rails are pretty close to NMRA spec.

Well, whatever the case I'm pretty happy just to have had the experience and to be able to say I've at least built one. I'm hoping my next turnout will be a lot better (and functional).

I'm actually laying these more or less by hand using a paper template. I use blue painters tape to temporarily hold things in place. If it looks like it would be easier using this method, it's not. In fact, the tape isn't quite as good as say if I had a third hand.

Even though the quality is pretty bad (cars will derail going hitting the guard rail on the main track) I can see some progression in my ability to be more precise. Here's a timeline of some of the pieces made. Hopefully it shows a progression in quality...

Maybe next post I'll be showing you all a completed, working, and well-made turnout.

In case you were wondering exactly how big is this turnout....

One last thing: If you're wondering about the globs of solder, they're relatively flat and won't show up when painted. As seen here is not the final product. A turnout would have the remaining crossties added and be painted after installation.

Some Trackage...

I layed out some ties on the upper level deck to get an idea how the scene would come together....

Hmmm.... is this a good color for my ground coat....