Dioramas Refinements

- Bench Work -
- Platform & Console Build -
- Topography -
- Ballasting & Scenary 1.0 -
- Bridge Redesign & Scenary 2.0 -
- Scenary Detailing-
- Lighting, Animation Work -
- Diorama Refinements -
- Oops - Major Nov. 2019 Track Fix -
- DCC Turnout Control Installation -
- 2020 Layout Extension -
- 2020 Layout Extension - Scenery-

M.B. Klein, one of my area's few brick and mortor retailers to focus on model railroading, recently closed its doors, to trade exclusively online. So I dropped by today, and... you can't have too many signals!!

I'm finally sorting out how I want to develop this area of the layout, after struggling with ideas from the beginning of the project. I came acroos these two earth moving replicas at a good price on Ebay, and the Walters construction site trailer kit, which sealed the deal on making if a construction site.

With the truss bridges swapped out for deck girder bridges, and catenary mounted for the two outer tracks, someone on a blog asked about the bridge track shown here. I didn't know where you can order track with guardrails, because the two segments pictured here came with an Ebay purchase of a now discontinued Walters two-track truss bridge. But I eventually found a solution for scratch building bridge track. Micro Electronics markets 36" lengths of bridge track. The Code 83 version includes the flex track and two 36" lengths of Code 70 rail for the guard rails. So I tried my hand at scratch building a 19+" and 10" segment for the outermost and innermost deck girder bridges, to replace the simple flex track on them now.

The $13 kit was long enough to make the 19+" (bottom of photo), and should leave plenty for the 10" (top) deck girder bridges.

I make a template for a jig, that I thought would be needed to bend the guard rails evenly. But reading up on bridge track guardrail construction back in the 60s-70s, I learned that in practise, damaged or defective rails were preferred for use as guardrails. So I figure the less than perfectly symmetrical guardrails would probably be as prototypical as not.

The little template exercise was helpful though, to contour the bend, and get the spacing of the guard rails right. I removed , and spaced out a few of the ties along 2.5" inches on each end of the 19" segment. A few ties popped off and had to be put back on, but ME track is pretty good quality, and the ties, once you slide them back in place, stay.

I found that securing the rail with 2cm extended, and no more than 5mm or an 1/8" of an inch in the plyer grip, gives the best working leverage for a smooth bend. One must take care to bend the rail absolutely along the horizontal plane of the rail, or the bent rail wont't lie flat on the ties.

So the project turned out to be not as heavy a lift as I'd anticipated, thanks to the ME kit. I now will look into what would be the best adhesive to bond plastic and brass.

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