Daily Archives: April 13, 2024

Layout Progress – Lower Deck

Model RR, News

Over the last two weekends I managed to squeeze two big work sessions in and made some great progress. First up was nailing down the rough track plan based on lots of trial and error over the last year.

Working on the lower deck track plan, sketching and mocking things up. The tracks to the left will be Dalecarlia water treatment plant. The track curves downhill into the “long siding” west of Georgetown. If/when the bridges over the C&O Canal are built, they will go in the left corner where the track swings to the left near the wall.
And some of Georgetown mocked up. This is the “new yard”. The photographer is standing at the foot of Wisconsin Ave looking West. I’ve managed to fit every track in the yard on the layout.

So, this weekend Kelly was able to swing by and we had a marathon construction session. After checking all of the templates and doing a lot of measuring, we took them up to the garage for some cutting.

Kelly cutting out some of the curved sub roadbed.
Kelly installing the splice plate at the apex of the “long siding” sub roadbed. Having a drill and impact driver make this process go a lot faster.
I persuaded Kelly to pause for a moment so I could snap a photo. This man is a force of nature!

After cutting the sub roadbed and splicing it together, we measured and cut risers. We then spent a considerable amount of time figuring out the grades, as Dalecarlia is a few inches higher than Georgetown on the layout. After a LOT of fiddling and experimenting, we got it figured out and permanently installed the risers. Last was cutting and installing Homasote over all of the Georgetown waterfront area (the plywood-covered sections.) It turns out I was shot one 28″ square piece, but thankfully Kelly has some extra at his house that he is going to give to me. Sweet! Here are a couple wrap up photos of what the layout currently looks like:

Dalecarlia on the left, down-grade to Georgetown at the end of the room, Georgetown is the Homasote section.
Standing at the other end of the room. Georgetown stretches out to the left.

Next steps are to do a bit of finishing on the Homasote and fasten it to the plywood base. I will also finish designing and building the bridge from the helix into the layout room, which will be a basic sheet of plywood and Masonite. I then need to empty out the room so I can get under the layout to cut holes and run bus cables. I need to do some work on the walls and figure out the backdrop corners as well as a few other things. A huge thanks to Kelly for pushing me today to get all of this done! The most progress I’ve made in a very long time.

Onward.