Phil S' RR

Sorry to be so right about your Tunnel! But you have come up with an elegant solution albeit with a lot of work and metal. Good job those blocks are loose fit jobbies that make changes much easier.

Noted you talking about Ballast Glue, external PVA let down 50/50 with water and a litte washing up liquid will work just fine. A good spray (water and a little washing up liquid) prior to slopping the glue in place helps it to bed in (use an old Glue Container with a hole 3-5 mm approx to apply being careful around points and none on track surfaces). It is fine to use a little Oil on moving parts to discourage glue sticking them. It will be milky coloured on first appication but will dry clear, also best done on a warm sunny day so that it dries in good time. Overnight drying can sometimes screw up the proces, particularly if there has been any ground frost. Sometime a second application may be required to get it good and solid.

In future if you need to lift your track it will come up easily and a clean using a Steam Wallaper Stripper will get it all off.
 
Revok - I'd be pulling a Trump - for you continental types - telling porkies, if I said extensive planning went into my line. I knew I wanted real water with track running beside it, a bridge across it and a fairly long tunnel somewhere. Other than that, the line just sort of "grew". The bridge went from being a single span to a triple in order to "look right". The simple loop evolved into a quasi folded dogbone to get a longer run. And, I never intended for there to be a second stream. It was the leftover pile of dirt, rocks and two smaller bridges begging to have a real function that prompted it. Once I started digging dirt, building walls, and laying block it became sort of addictive. Things kind of happened on the fly. I still haven't decided how I want to incorporate my next loop. All I know for sure is that it's going to attach to what is currently the stub coming off the wye. I've got to think about ease of yard maintenance, cutting the grass, access to the shed and a possible branch line into the shed. Oh how nice it would be to just drive the trains somewhere secure for the night and dispense with all those red boxes!

Phil S.
 
Yes a track to a Shed for stock and a few shelves in the House near the Shed for Locomotives is the way to go if you can plan it. Having built a few lines that did not go that way I was determined to get it right on this and my previous line.
 
All very impressive.......and it's RHB....love it.
Kev
 
Phil, the railroad looks great! :)
Have you had any problems with frost heave? with the blocks on the ground?
I have an area of my railroad where I could use a similar system of blocks, but im afraid frost heave will move the blocks around every spring. (Western NY, USA)
thanks,
Scot
 
Hi Scot - The block has only been down through one winter. We did have quit a bit of snow and three or four freeze-thaw cycles here in Ann Arbor. But, probably not near the snow you get if you're near Buffalo! There has been no evidence of frost heave so far. I do have 3 to 4 inches of compacted slag sand base under the blocks. That provides stability and drainage. Essentially they're laid like you would pavers for a patio or walkway. The pics in post #4 will give you a good idea how I put them down.

Phil S.
 
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Fantastic pics, great to see your Xrot at work in the garden. Seems as though you had the same problem as they had with the real thing on the Bernina Pass, not enough snow to blow!

AlpGrum-05.jpg
 
We had the perfect dusting of snow the night before the pics were taken. Enough on the tracks to give a realistic look and some nice pics as the Xrot plowed through it. No, unfortunately doesn't really blow snow but it is an effective plow for small amount that fell overnight.

I put the model though it's paces for about two hours yesterday. The sound and smoke/steam are very effective. Each of the four driving cylinders has two ports that emit "steam" alternately with the stroke of the piston in addition to prodigious synchronized puffing out the stack. I don't do YouTube, but the effect is very reminiscent of what can be seen with the recent KISS gauge 1 steam models.

I forgot to open the access doors to the rotor cylinders while it was on the tracks to observe their working and whether they too, had steam effects. Unfortunately, it is raining here today, so I won't have the opportunity to check it. The instructions said the model should be lubed before use. I did briefly run it on my rolling road after lightly oiling the rotating/sliding parts when it first arrived last week. However, the smoke effect was too overwhelming for operation in the house though.

Phil S.
 
Thought I'd update this thread with a few new pics of what I've been up to the past few weeks. I added a tunnel portal where one was missing and re-did the one I had in place. These projects were discussed in other threads. I've now added some insulation foam board "landscaping" above the tunnel itself. The most important thing was to make sure the track-work underneath could be easily accessed if - more like when - I needed to.

First a pic showing the tunnel "roof". It consists of Trex brand composite deck boards. This shot was taken a few years ago when construction on the RR began in earnest.

Tunnel roof - 1.jpg

The far side consists of three long individual boards. The near side is two panels of three much shorter boards put together. A third panel fills the curved area. The panels and boards are just manageable if they need to be removed. (Which they have many times for various reasons so far!) I wanted to make sure the "landscaping" was also easily movable when I got around to it. I decided to use the same type of foam insulation board I used for the tunnel portals.

Tunnel roof - 1 _2_.jpg

The six foam panels I put together are multiple layers of 2 inch thick board glued together with a water-based contact adhesive. I ran out of the Borden Saf-T brand contact cement I had been praising in the portal threads and found that it is no longer made. After searching for a suitable replacement, I ended up buying 3M "Fastbond" 30NF water-based contact adhesive. It was not cheap at $30 per quart but works as well or better than the Borden Saf-T contact cement.

Tunnel roof - 1 _4_.jpg

I did some carving of the boards with my hot-wire tool before they were glued in place. The panels were also made to overlap as can be seen above. I tried to fit the panels fairly closely to the blocks but wasn't overly concerned about scribing to eliminate any gaps. The gaps are not noticeable from typical viewing angles.

Tunnel roof - 1 _3_.jpg

Took a break to run some trains.

Tunnel roof - 1 _5_.jpg

in the next pic I've begun painting the foam panels. Like the tunnel portals, I started with a dark brown base coat.

Tunnel roof - 1 _8_.jpg

Below are the finished "for the time being" panels. They are easy to remove. The foam panels also have another big advantage compared to the bare boards I started with. I park trains in the tunnel if it begins to rain. The foam provides much better protection to the track and trains below than the bare boards did. Of course it wouldn't be Switzerland in Ann Arbor without a castle ruin! I wonder where they found all that non-indigenous gray stone?

Tunnel roof - 1 _9_.jpg

Here's one more low angle shot of Thusis exiting the tunnel.

Tunnel roof - 1 _10_.jpg

Visible in this photo is granite "chicken grit" from Tractor Supply that I wanted to try out as ballast. it is loosely laid in this particular application. It looks and works pretty good. I'll have to make more extensive use of it now that I've expended the last of the 30A slag sand I had piled in the driveway.

Phil S.
 
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I need to build a stream very similar to that, and though I have read up on water features, still at a lose where to start.
 
JimmyB said:
I need to build a stream very similar to that, and though I have read up on water features, still at a lose where to start.
Click to expand...

The thing to remember, is you need a 'sump' at the bottom, big enough to hold all the water. - You may have a pool at the top, but the stream itself will be very-nearly level and will empty into the bottom 'sump' when the pump is turned off.
You can't run 365 days a year in the UK, and turning the feature off, and letting the water be (mostly) stored in an underground store, means it will not freeze so easily (damaging pipework etc.) and will not turn green so readily.

The pump can just sit in the bottom tank, possibly on a couple of bricks, and lift-out for storage over winter.
 
PhilP said:
The thing to remember, is you need a 'sump' at the bottom, big enough to hold all the water. - You may have a pool at the top, but the stream itself will be very-nearly level and will empty into the bottom 'sump' when the pump is turned off.
You can't run 365 days a year in the UK, and turning the feature off, and letting the water be (mostly) stored in an underground store, means it will not freeze so easily (damaging pipework etc.) and will not turn green so readily.

The pump can just sit in the bottom tank, possibly on a couple of bricks, and lift-out for storage over winter.
Click to expand...
Phil, I have the sump sorted, an old water storage tank of sufficient volume, its the water course itself that intrigues, the placing of the rocks and sand sheeting etc!!
 
JimmyB said:
Phil, I have the sump sorted, an old water storage tank of sufficient volume, its the water course itself that intrigues, the placing of the rocks and sand sheeting etc!!
Click to expand...

Well going back to the beginning of this thread will help..

Rik may have done an item on his water-course, but possibly more-so on his Mill?

We probably need a separate thread? - Water, and the Garden Railway. - Sounds like the title for a book? :think:
If anyone does one.. You can use the title if you give me a credit, and a copy! :):nod:
 
As promised in another thread - a few pics of my "factory fresh" and straight from the paint shop Climax making the rounds.

Climax - 1.jpg Climax - 1 _5_.jpg Climax - 1 _6_.jpg Climax - 1 _1_.jpg Climax - 1 _4_.jpg Climax - 1 _7_.jpg Climax - 1 _8_.jpg Climax - 1 _9_.jpg Climax - 1 _10_.jpg Climax - 1 _2_.jpg

I need to lengthen the LGB tie down chains on the log dis-connects. They're maxed out in the pics but the wagons need to be able to haul a bigger load. I could also use another set of six to give a more realistic length to the train.

And now a couple of "bonus" pics:

NightBonus - 1 _2_.jpg NightBonus - 1.jpg

Hope you enjoy.

Phil S.
 
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