Sedalia Spline and Mill Siding

Ive had some time off and am getting the chance to work on the Model Railroad a lot these past few days.  Today I didn't really have a plan when I walked into the room, but, after looking at it for a few minutes, I ripped out the basic landform behind the incline toward Sedalia(behind the mill and fuel facilities).

All of the area that appears to be covered in masking tape, and the area in the far right of the picture with the paster cloth on it went straight into the trash can.

The problem with this area is that we are fitting the grade to Sedalia along the back wall of the layout in as small of an area as possible while still making the landscape between the two height diferences believable.  My first attempt at building this was using plywood as sub-roadbed, and I have cut the ply to about 2-4in wide, which resulted in some of the terrain between the two levels as a sheer cliff and in one six inch section, the top of the cliff protruded further than the base.  Rather than attempt to fight it anymore, In the spur of the moment this afternoon, I ripped it all out and decided to put in a new spline roadbed for this section. 

Spline Roadbed is quite an easy process, just some what time consuming.  It seems to always be good to have another project that you can work on while the glue dries a little bit before we have to take clamps off to put in the next section of spline.  For our spline we use 1/8" Masonite(hardboard) cut into 3/4" strips. I put a screw in the middle of every riser so that I could clamp the first stip to it and work outward from there.  With 1/8" Masonite, it takes 7 layers to be wide enough for the cork roadbed.

Once I completed the Spline to Sedalia, I began laying track in the siding for the mill/fuel area.  Most of the turnouts for the layout are being hand laid with the FastTracks system, but I only had a few of them completed currently. I still need to build 4 more turnout before I can lay the two tracks for the fuel area, and all of the tracks for the mill.