Fluesheet's Shelf Layout

[Fluesheet]

Aha! The edit button is back today - I've either recovered my eyesight, or I've been removed from some moderated status or other.

In any case, I have some additional tie detailing that I've been experimenting with on the shelf (the following, and a few additional, were posted in the Distressed Ties thread in the weathering forum). These were formed by cutting various notches out of the ties using a hobby knife, then airbrushing some white over the tie to give it an aged look (I need to fix the overspray in the first). The CVT ties are especially good for this because they're hollow, making a deep split relatively easy to reproduce.


Full sized image here


Full sized image here


Full sized image here

Next is the final tie work for two turnouts that have gone tieless for far too long...

Build thread: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://goodman312.zenfolio.com/p802892396">http://goodman312.zenfolio.com/p802892396</a><!-- m -->

[mountaingoatgreg]

Looking good!!

I have an industrial trackage I am going to start working on and will need to be making a bunch of distressed ties. Maybe CVMW should make an FRA excepted tie strip just paint for awful looking track.

[e-paw]

[Fluesheet]

Looking good!!
Maybe CVMW should make an FRA excepted tie strip just paint for awful looking track.

That would be interesting, for sure, Greg. And certainly faster than making all your own - more layout building time (yay) but less modeling (boo).

My last two turnouts were straight Fast Tracks builds, but I decided to use individual wood ties instead of the hybrid CVMW tie blocks or Fast Tracks' own twist ties (see earlier posts for rambling discussions on those).

A little 1929 prototype background first: the ties are arranged more or less to the AREA recommended practices for a #6 crossover as outlined in the Maintenance Cyclopedia I posted comments about earlier. From tie end to tie end (in the diagram) is 21'6", but the longest single tie is 14'; combinations of 10' / 11'6", 8' / 13'6" and 7'6" / 14' ties make up the total length. The paired ties were butted together alternately between the middle of the gage of the crossover track and then between one crossover rail and an inside rail of the main. I tried to duplicate that here (it's close, but not right).


Full sized photo here

If you look closely at the ends of the wood ties, you'll see some small shims - I needed these to account for a dip in the Homasote here, but mainly to shim up ties that were too thin. "Scale" 9"x7" wood ties are significantly thicker than the CVMW ties that lead up to the turnouts (and the PC board ties are thinner yet!), so they had to be thinned to maintain an even surface. Boy was that a pain. Unfortunately "profile" wood ties (thinner ties) are too thin, so weren't an option. I tried a couple thinning methods:
- Using a hobby knife freehand - very inconsistent; the blade would follow the grain. Immediate fail.
- I constructed a small styrene fixture that had a channel for the tie and had a #7 blade mounted in it, the idea being to slide the tie through and have excess thickness planed off. It was genious! It was also a failure! (sorry, no photo).
- Sand the ties to thickness on sand paper. It kind of worked, but I would end up with a tie out of square in one or more dimensions, leading to the shims in the photo. Plus it was slow. It also wore out my fingerprints.

Then, success! A "planer" using a drill press, a Dremel drum sanding bit and a guide. The big win here is that it is MUCH easier to control thickness AND the rough finish looks good - lots of wood grain. Props to Ben on the Model Rail Radio podcast for suggesting this. This is one of those "I should have thought of this sooner" items.

Full size image here.

I bought 3' strips of 7x9' scale lumber from Mt. Albert - the above would have been very difficult with ties cut to length.

After that, it was just a matter of setting up a stop on my Chopper and cutting the ties to various lengths in batches:

Full Size

Spacing the ties out using a straight edge (side note - get dental tools for your modeling tool box)

Full size here

And finishing off with thinned white glue applied with a pipette.

Full size image here.

End of day, July 17, 2011 (I got behind!)

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Have fun!

[modelsof1900]

Matt,

excellent craftsmanship!

[SP1]

Damn good!Thats some dedicated work.

[mountaingoatgreg]

More impressive Track work Great Job!!!!

You have reveled one of my major pet peeves with commerical turnouts, that they all have even tie spacing. Once you notice the difference everytime I see one it drives me nuts.

Working from the prototype is always great, I am lucky enough to have a MOW recommeneded practices from the railroad I model, including turnout layouts. The only thing though is that if i followed them exactly the "small" turnout would be almost as long as a #10 from Walthers.

Keep up the great work!!

[Fluesheet]

Working from the prototype is always great, I am lucky enough to have a MOW recommeneded practices from the railroad I model, including turnout layouts. The only thing though is that if i followed them exactly the "small" turnout would be almost as long as a #10 from Walthers.

I know what you mean Mountain. In my case, I was surprised that my Cyclopedia had turnout layouts as small as #5's. Very handy model railroad sized references.

[Fluesheet]

Aha! I found some photos I forgot to post back when I took them - part of another lighting test (I have a thread on flourescent colors elsewhere) for the shelf layout.

The shelf had OK light from the the overhead flourescents, but it had a more shadow than I liked towards the rear. Duncan McCree of Tam Valley Depot talked about surface mount LED's on Model Rail Radio show 22 (podcast) that he sourced on ebay from a seller called TOPBRIGHT. I decided to follow his lead (I have some additional details on the Model Rail Radio wiki: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://modelrailradio.com/wiki/index.php?title=Lighting">http://modelrailradio.com/wiki/index.php?title=Lighting</a><!-- m -->.) They're nice in this application. Low profile and throw off good light. These are warm white lights and cost about $35 per 5 meter roll (about 16 feet) - too expensive for extensive lighting, but perfect for this confined space. There are other colors available (blue, whiter whites, etc.), but I don't have experience with those.

I liked these well enough to order two additional rolls - partly because I had cannibalized part of my layout lighting to make a magic mirror for a school play (that was awesome - I'm still patting my back for that one! ).

Shelf layouts rock as a learning tool!

Ambient light only


Ambient light plus the LED's only

[Harry]

cool Matt

[Fluesheet]

Coincidentally, there is an article on LED strip lighting like I used in the post above in this month's Railroad Model Craftsman (January, 2012). I also learned something new - the author ordered his LED strip with wired and wireless dimmers. I guess I'll give that a try if I need to purchase another roll.

I'm also finding what are being referred to as "neutral" white LED's. From what I've seen, the color descriptions fall into the following temperature ranges (these are approximate - some vendors warms are warmer, and cools are cooler):
- Warm white -> ~3200K
- Neutral white -> ~4100 - ~5000K
- Cool white -> 6500 - 7000K

[Fluesheet]

This photo was taken about 5 months ago to make sure a background "flat" building would fit correctly. The building is a Walthers REA model that was built and painted by my wife. The scene turned out fairly nice.

Check out the Sergent couplers on the car. These things are good looking (especially in the full sized photo)!



The full sized photo is here.

[doctorwayne]

The full sized photo is here.

Yeah, and if you click on the image, it gets really "full-size"!

Your background building looks great, as does the grass alongside the track.

Wayne

[Fluesheet]

Yeah, and if you click on the image, it gets really "full-size"!

I love the big images for picking out details (like the rail joint bars) and things that could be fixed.

As a complete tangent, I use a 6 megapixel camera (Nikon D40) set to about half largest possible image size; the full sized photo above comes out to only 3.3 megapixels! I could only see using the largest image size on my camera if I was intending to blow it up to poster size (for model railroading purposes, anyway). I'd never come close to using the 12 and 15 megapixels that newer cameras think that people need.

Back to regularly scheduled programming....

[Tyson Rayles]

Great pic and modeling!