I have the center line of my track plan laid out on brown paper, have the sides of the sub-roadbed drawn, and have cut out and placed the resulting paper ribbon templates on the sheet plywood to maximize use of the wood. Drawing the sides of the sub-roadbed on the plywood is easy.
But how do you guys transfer the accurate “center line” from the template onto the plywood?
the easiest way I know is to get the tracing paper that a seamstress would use to transfer a pattern to coth. You can find it at WalMart in the sewing section. It is inexpensive and can be used many times over. Blue or green seem to be easier to see than red on plywood. After you get the paper put it under your patters and use a Stylus (again available at WalMart) to trace the centerline of your template that will transfer the centerline to the subroadbed.
Happy building
What I have done may not be the best method, but it worked.
Once I had my outer lines I used 1/2 of the cork road bed and laid it against the outer line, then ran my pencil for the center line. My wood is covered in foam so I just used pins to hold it in place, however I would think a low temp hot glue or small tacks would allow you to ‘tack’ the cork in place as you go.
-just an idea
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When I used homasote/plywood, I made some guides, the held a pencil. Then ran the guide along the edge of the subroadbed. Although, now that I use foam, I just eyeball the centerlines.
Nick
my dad and i just made another template. then we placed that on the cork, measured for accuracy at a couple spots and marked the cork with a pencil. since that particular section was double track we just made a template to fit inbetween the center lines.
hope that helped. i know it is/was confusing and will try and post some pictures but i have to get through the end of the school
it is so hard to juggle school and trains [:p]
donhalshanks, here’s the Wal*Mart method. Did this last weekend. [:)]
http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=51349
i always layed my track down where i wanted it to go… and then took a sharpie magic marker and put a dot between the ties in the middle…it takes a while…but you get a very accouret layout of the track…
csx engineer
Thanks for the great tips! Everyone is so helpful. I’ll probably try the sewing tracing paper method, since the template edges are not as accurate as my center line to use for a guide. I’ll be using homabed for the roadbed, and hand laying the track … so spotting first with the track not an option in ths case.
Hal