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.

Helix Approach

Started working on the sub-roadbed from the river crossing to the helix today.  The area will also including the siding tracks for Sedalia Quarry, and part of it will need to be removable to access the window.  I decided to put in spline roadbed, and had completed that when we decided that we could put in a small 8" deep lift out section and just scenic the whole area.

Since the bridges are still part of the incline grade to the helix, I notched out part of the supports for the spline to sit down at the correct level.  I used a 12" piece of plywood to clamp to the spline as it went in so that area stayed straight for the turnout to be placed there.

Here are a few pictures after a few of the spline have gone into place.  I seems we use a clamp spaced about every 4-6 inches to make sure it is held together nicely while the glue dries.  The area below the spline is covered with shop towels to catch any of the glue that drips out.  While I am very particular about no glue squeezing out on the top of the spline, I dont really care about the bottom.

This is the part where we decided to change it all up and add an 8" deep section of plywood that will be the lift out so that we can put some rural scenery around that tracks as it crosses over to the island of the helix.  Had we know we were going to do this at the beginning of the day I wouldn't have put in the spline roadbed, but now that both are in, it will look nice having the elevated track and have the scenery slope down from the track in front.

A couple pictures of a few of our locomotives lined up in the staging yard.

Custom Paint and Staging

Worked on a few small projects today, turning an Undecorated Kato SD40-2 into a GATX Leased Loco, and roadbed on the St. Louis Staging yard.  They seemed to work well together, while waiting for paint to dry I could get some cork road bed down.... until I ran out, time for a trip to the hobby store.

St. Louis Staging --

It was a recent change to the layout to add a lower level staging yard, originally the lower level was planned as a continuous loop so that when my niece was over she could run a train in a large circle without really anyone having to pay close attention. We have changed the layout instead to a point to point by simply removing part of the loop at one end and moving some track around.  By doing so we have added a lift out section in front of a window that will be the start of a staging yard, with the rest being on top of a storage unit on the other side of the window.

The Project was going really well and seemed to be getting a lot accomplished, until I reached for that next section of Midwest Products cork roadbed but instead found and empty box, fail.  A trip to the hobby store clearly in my near future.





GATX Locomotive (SD40-2) --

I have a few undecorated Kato Diesels that have been sitting on the shelf for the better part of a year with no plan ahead of them, until today.  On a recent trip I had seen a few freshly painted GATX locomotives and while thinking about the undecorated locos today I have decided that they could pair nicely.  I found some GATX decal sets from Microscale and have got them order.  While I wait for the decals to arrive I went ahead and got some paint on the shell.  There is still some detail work todo before the decals get placed, and then once I get the decals on there, I can make the loco look as it it hasn't freshly rolled out of the paint shop.

Freshly out of the Paint Booth with out a flash, just fluorescent lighting from the ceiling fixtures, while the picture below was taken with a flash