Tracks on the wall, and under the stairs

Finally got back to the layout, and have made great progress getting the final link between Ridgway and Durango built. This is a double-level shelf running along the wall and thru the basement stairs, and because it's one of most difficult piece of benchwork, I've left until nearly the end.

Here's the Ridgway yard area; the underside of the stairs is to the right. That board-thingie sitting on the yard is the upper-level main that installs inside the bathroom - through the closet and bathroom and into the laundry area. It's one long piece, and the fewer joints the fewer problems w/ trackwork, I reckon.



Here's the two levels of mainline approaching the stairs from the other side. It's a very narrow stack of two shelves, the lower one 4" wide, the upper 4.75", and part of the trickiness was figuring out how to support it. After building a mock-up, I finally settled on a 1x2s screwed into the wall, with more 1x2s on the outer edge under each shelf, which is 1/2" 4-ply plywood. This forms a bridge, basically.

There's a little 7" lip in the wall (where it changes from drywall on concrete to a normal stud wall), and I was able to have a 1x2 stick out from this lip to form a brace perpendicular to the shelf. I think a single angled bracket under another part will complete the supports for this.

Part of the mock-up was figuring out how high I needed my guardrails to be; the track is right against the edge of this little shelf, along a major aisle into the layout, and I've got to protect against trains falling off. I found that a wall only 3/4" high (measured from the plywood base) will work, even with the track elevated on cork roadbed. This wall is low enough to reach over easily for track cleaning, but high enough to keep equipment off the floor, or so I think.

After briefly losing a test car INSIDE the stairs (the back is closed & drywalled), I put this guardrail on the portion that's actually inside the stairs as well.

Once this is finished up, it's on to Telluride. The benchwork there is completed up to Keystone Hill to the edge of town, but I haven't built further because I need the floorspace for cutting large plywood sections. Now that most of those are complete, I can more the tools and finish up Telluride. And then, finally, on to track laying.

Track laying has been delayed, because (1) I didn't want delicate track in an area of such heavy construction, and (2) because I couldn't afford the track yet anyway. I think both of those issues are ending, enough to begin trackwork anyway.

No progress at all the last couple of months... I'm involved in a large project w/our church and work got busy as well. Hopefully that'll change soon!

Ophir is coming along. The loop and road thru town are complete (in plywood only), and bridges on the line are complete from 44-A near Vance Jct all the way thru 46-D on the high line. Of course, I'm having to compress the lengths of the bridges, as I've only got about 29' to work with. I'm also trying to keep some kind of relative separation between the the bridges - ie 46-B and 46-C are right next to each other, 46-A is a little before them, and 46-D is a bit further away in the other direction.

But all this fiddling means the compression is all over the board - 45-B is about 62% of it's prototype length, while 46-D is only 37%. And the entire high line is pretty straight - there just isn't room for any twists or curves. I did manage to curve the lower line a bit. So - it's not an exact model, but I knew that starting out. At least there'll be lots of trestles to build and (eventually) look at. Maybe I can mass-produce these critters when I get to that point - I'm up to 11 already!

The climb to Ophir

Well, last weekend saw more work on the Ophir loop area. The track is so high here, I feel like I'm working on an 'airline route'! The big bridge 45-A has it's form roughed in, and I'm working around the depot area now, toward the back of the loop. In this area, there are 3 levels of track - the hidden return loop, the hidden Durango staging, then the Ophir area. I hadn't planned on going over the staging, but the grades worked out and pushing that loop back to the wall gave me a little more room for 45-A.

Here's a shot of trestle 45-A's opening, showing most of the loop area and the hidden return track under the loop. The grade up from the Ophir lowline lessens to 1% over 45-A, then flattens to zero thru the depot grounds, then back to 2% entering 45-B. It'll be flat again on the passing siding (just to make switching easier), but by having some grade in the loop itself, I think I can get a little grade separation between the siding and 45-A below it.

Here's another shot, showing the area where the siding at the Ophir depot will begin, and the opening in the rear for trestle 45-B.





Here's the grade coming up from Vance Jct. I roughed in the location for trestle 44-A at the beginning (not really visible in this shot). The Ophir low line, on my layout, is a constant 2.5% grade, and as curvy as I could make it, given the long narrow benchwork in this section.


The grades came out so high that the high line bridges will be nearly level I think - I'm already nearly at the Lizard Head elevation and pushing eye-level for viewing. I would've liked a little more vertical distance between the lower and upper lines, but I think this'll work ok. I had to maintain the steep grade on the lower line, just because Ophir depot had to be high enough to clear the Durango staging tracks.

Keystone hill's subroadbed and benchwork is complete, and the grade is in place all the way through the wye and up to the edge of Telluride proper. Roadbed has been progressing up the lower portion of Ophir loop, about a 1/4 of the way to Ophir so far. And - the first three bridges have been roughed in - two on the Telluride branch (39-A and 42-A) and one at the base of Ophir loop (44-A, the Butterfly trestle). These are really just framed openings in the roadbed, with support below for eventual trestle bents, but it's a tremendous boost to me to be able to see them. For now, I've got very narrow sections of plywood tack-glued over the openings, wide enough to just support the flex track that'll be laid there initially. Later, I'll pop the plywood and flex track tie sections out and build real bridges under the rails. But that's probably a long way off. At least the narrow plywood kinda looks like a bridge, and it makes imagining the final scene much easier.

All sections in this area have been immediately covered with wooden track and Thomas trains, and that's ok with me. In fact, sometimes they get covered before I've even anchored the new roadbed to the risers! This is all Eli's work (he's 7). The opening for bridge 39-A had a beautiful plastic suspension bridge running across it before I had a chance to add my temporary plywood support. My 10-year-old, Josh, has also been 'testing' the roadbed by manually running one of my old Lionel O-27 steam engines over the roadbed, around the entire layout. It's surprising that this locomotive actually fits through most of the HO-gauge-sized openings in the walls and hidden trackage. So - no 'real' track yet but at least something's moving on the layout! I love having the kids involved like this; it's great to see them interested in it.