04-27-2015, 01:51 AM
This won't be a how-to or a blow-by-blow account, but simply a thread to follow the construction of a Korber roundhouse. I've shortened the structure, since my largest locos are USRA Mikados, and I've also shortened one stall even more in order to accommodate a track passing behind the roundhouse to gain access to a staging yard. I'm not following any particular prototype and am working out the construction details as I come to them....that's another way of saying that much of this is being made-up to deal with the kit's extremely sparse instructions. 
This is the basic 3-stall roundhouse kit, with two add-on stalls. The walls are cast resin, which is fairly brittle, but it cuts well with a hacksaw. The instructions recommend ca for assembly, but I'm not a fan of it for such long and not-that-well-fitting joints, so I opted for 1-72 machine screws, both to hold the walls together at the corners and to fasten all of the walls to a floor, which I cut from .060" sheet styrene (not part of the kit).
The instructions do offer a floorplan, which was helpful for determining the location of the turntable relative to the roundhouse. I'm using a Walthers 90' turntable, although I'll probably modify its appearance somewhat. It'll be manually powered, with indexing by-eye.
After the turntable pit was installed and the location of the roundhouse drawn onto the plywood layout top, I cut Atlas code83 flextrack to length and used solvent cement to tack it to the .060" roundhouse floor. (I cemented it only under a few ties at the door opening and at the rear of the building, as quite a few ties will be removed from between the rails to create the impression of inspection pits.)
Here's the partially assembled roundhouse on its styrene floor. Because I shortened the depth of the stalls, I had to also make the rear wall sections narrower. A hacksaw was used, which resulted in a bit of a hack-job, so I opted to use Evergreen .250" "H" columns at the joints. These seemed to make the structure much more solid, even without being cemented together, so I used them on the front, too.
![[Image: ROUNDHOUSE%20AT%20MOUNT%20FOREST...%20005.jpg]](http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b399/doctorwayne/STRUCTURES%20%20PART%20II/ROUNDHOUSE%20AT%20MOUNT%20FOREST...%20005.jpg)
After all of the wall sections had been screwed to the floor, I flexed the floor slightly so that the joints at the columns opened at their top ends. This allowed me to insert/drip some JB Weld into the joints. When the assembly was placed back on the layout, any excess was squeezed out and wiped off, then the whole works left to set-up.
The next day, there was no longer any flex in the floor, and all joints seemed solid.
In order to build-up the floor, I cut 3/32" sheet balsa (left over from a scratchbuilding project from over 45 years ago) to fit between the individual tracks, then used gelled contact cement to fasten it to the styrene sub-floor. The balsa's thickness is the same as that of the Atlas ties, leaving an almost level surface for the application of a finished styrene floor between the tracks.
Here's a look at the floor, with one section removed to show the balsa underlay:
![[Image: ROUNDHOUSE%20AT%20MOUNT%20FOREST...%20017.jpg]](http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b399/doctorwayne/STRUCTURES%20%20PART%20II/ROUNDHOUSE%20AT%20MOUNT%20FOREST...%20017.jpg)
To be continued....
This is the basic 3-stall roundhouse kit, with two add-on stalls. The walls are cast resin, which is fairly brittle, but it cuts well with a hacksaw. The instructions recommend ca for assembly, but I'm not a fan of it for such long and not-that-well-fitting joints, so I opted for 1-72 machine screws, both to hold the walls together at the corners and to fasten all of the walls to a floor, which I cut from .060" sheet styrene (not part of the kit).
The instructions do offer a floorplan, which was helpful for determining the location of the turntable relative to the roundhouse. I'm using a Walthers 90' turntable, although I'll probably modify its appearance somewhat. It'll be manually powered, with indexing by-eye.
After the turntable pit was installed and the location of the roundhouse drawn onto the plywood layout top, I cut Atlas code83 flextrack to length and used solvent cement to tack it to the .060" roundhouse floor. (I cemented it only under a few ties at the door opening and at the rear of the building, as quite a few ties will be removed from between the rails to create the impression of inspection pits.)
Here's the partially assembled roundhouse on its styrene floor. Because I shortened the depth of the stalls, I had to also make the rear wall sections narrower. A hacksaw was used, which resulted in a bit of a hack-job, so I opted to use Evergreen .250" "H" columns at the joints. These seemed to make the structure much more solid, even without being cemented together, so I used them on the front, too.
After all of the wall sections had been screwed to the floor, I flexed the floor slightly so that the joints at the columns opened at their top ends. This allowed me to insert/drip some JB Weld into the joints. When the assembly was placed back on the layout, any excess was squeezed out and wiped off, then the whole works left to set-up.
The next day, there was no longer any flex in the floor, and all joints seemed solid.
In order to build-up the floor, I cut 3/32" sheet balsa (left over from a scratchbuilding project from over 45 years ago) to fit between the individual tracks, then used gelled contact cement to fasten it to the styrene sub-floor. The balsa's thickness is the same as that of the Atlas ties, leaving an almost level surface for the application of a finished styrene floor between the tracks.Here's a look at the floor, with one section removed to show the balsa underlay:
To be continued....