I know that this question is already answered but I can’t find it.
What distance between risers do you guys recommend for masonite spline roadbed?
Anywhere from 15-80 cm, EL. No, I’m not kidding. You may find that it is handy to have three close together for support and bending around tight curves, but you can safely span 80cm on the straights once you have 6 splines glued together.
I have just finished my uppper leve (descending) main with curves ranging from 1.3m - 75cm. It is a bit tedious, takes time, a lot of patience, and it can be messy.
A tip - you can safely glue up to three spline pieces together at one time. Just make sure that you put glue on all sides that make contact…all sides that make contact.
Another tip- start the process by placing risers temporarily, and them bend one piece of spline around thin screws driven into the riser tops at the centreline, from riser-to-riser ALL THE WAY around your main. This is an extra step, and it will take time, but when those pieces are placed so that they overlap by about 10cm, you will be able to get down to eye leve and see where your risers need to be adjusted for height…you’ll see kinks easily. Also, you won’t find that your grade is too shallow or too steep and that it won’t get to the height you need it to in the length you have alloted for it.
Yet another tip - once you have glued two or three spline pieces in place, and have them clamped about every 15cm (give or take…let your eyes and fingers tell you where clamps are needed for compression) go back and adjust the surfaces of the two or three pieces so that they match all the way along the length. THIS IS IMPORTANT if you don’t want to do a lot of surform planing and sanding, and if you want your roadbed to be level…not tilted from side to side. Once you have done that, go back and check it AGAIN! Some of it will have slipped back uneven.
Tip to help with the last tip- don’t use the twin pronged sprung clamps exclusively where the splines want to sag out of level between them. Use a suitably sized screw metal clamp with which you can do a much better job of com
Wow Crandell that sounds like alot of work !!! are the benfits of spline roadbed worth all that extra effort? I guess they must be , or you and countless others wouldnt be taking the time and making the effort… I guess I havent read enough to see these benefits yet.
As a sidenote :::: I would guess its a LOT harder to change your trackplan or make adjustments once you have invested all that time and effort into spline, you must be pretty definate before you even begin this method of roadbed support, hats off to you and the rest that take this path.
Take care & be safe,
Karl.
On straight sections, it depends on the thickness (width or hieght of the spline pieces). Strength and stiffness are proportional to the width times the thickness cubed. Thus if your spline is made up of masonite 2" wide placed on edge, it will be eight times as strong as it would be if it was 1" wide.
Karl, as you have guessed, one really has to have his/her track plan nailed. It must be accurately measured for length, grade, and curvature, particularly if you have crossovers where one train crosses over another. Then, in order to be assured of sufficient clearance at the crossover, I undertook the “mock-up” with the single splines bent around thin screws driven into the centreline at the tops of the risers. A quick glance from the side, at eye leve, will tell you if you have screwed up on the riser levels someplace. A laser level canted the correct amount to show the horizontal beam at the correct grade will help to build confidence, but it is only good for an arc of about 20 degrees, after which errors build up due to the altazimuth arrangement of the mount.
Is it worth it? I will post some pix next weekend in the Weekend Madness thread, if things work out, and you can decide for yourself. I can tell you, right now, with sticky fingers, pealing finger tips, newspaper strewn over our new (now rather dusty) carpet, and days ahead of me before I can dare to lay a section of track, I will never revert to another form of laying subroadbed. The bare splines look so darned pretty, serpentine, and effective, that I have entered a whole new level of model railroading. I will probably never match the ARTHILL’s, AGGRO’s, jfugate’s, UKGuy’s…oh, that’s you…or Bob Boudreau’s, but I have definitely upped my ability in this hobby a full notch.
And yes, once you have built a loop of the spline, you are locked in about 95%…you could always use a hacksaw and cut out a section to be re-done/re-oriented, but if you don’t care to undo all that hard work, you have what you have.
-Crandell
selector:
That is exactly what I like to hear. I’m glad that you like it. I have not tried it yet, but I have seen Joe Fugate do it on his DVD Siskiyou Line vol 2 design & construction and it really looks amazing. To be honest, I have never seen a better method for laying subroadbed. There is a lot of advantages. I’m looking forward to your pictures.
Here is a good page about it:
http://www.ucwrr.com/construction.htm
Two more pages:
http://s145079212.onlinehome.us/rr/howto/splines/index.shtml
http://siskiyou.railfan.net/model/constructionNotes/easySpline.html
[quote]
QUOTE: Originally posted by selector
Karl, as you have guessed, one really has to have his/her track plan nailed. It must be accurately measured for length, grade, and curvature, particularly if you have crossovers where one train crosses over another. Then, in order to be assured of sufficient clearance at the crossover, I undertook the “mock-up” with the single splines bent around thin screws driven into the centreline at the tops of the risers. A quick glance from the side, at eye leve, will tell you if you have screwed up on the riser levels someplace. A laser level canted the correct amount to show the horizontal beam at the correct grade will help to build confidence, but it is only good for an arc of about 20 degrees, after which errors build up due to the altazimuth arrangement of the mount.
Is it worth it? I will post some pix next weekend in the Weekend Madness thread, if things work out, and you can decide for yourself. I can tell you, right now, with sticky fingers, pealing finger tips, newspaper strewn over our new (now rather dusty) carpet, and days ahead of me before I can dare to lay a section of track, I will never revert to another form of laying subroadbed. The bare splines look so darned pretty, serpentine, and effective, that I have entered a whole new level of model railroading. I will probably never