Its been a year (to the day!) that I built some trackwork for my CNJ Bronx Terminal layout. Several distractions drew me away from that area of the project (my favorite), but this weekend I was able to return to the trackwork and finish up one of the last pieces, a curved crossover.
I built this section will all PC board ties and will likely return to the previous sections and complete them with PC board ties as well. This will ensure very solid trackwork as I am anticipating moving this layout around quite a bit.
All the straight and curved sections of track are also going to be all PC board construction.
There are several more images and narrative on my CNJ Bronx Terminal site.
The prototype radius was 90 feet. Now, if HO is 1:87.1, I make it a smidge over a foot.
While the prototype was operated by CNJ1000, that short box-cab diesel, the Uintah (Mantua) three foot gauge 2-6-6-2 was designed to round the same prototype radius. I haven’t tested mine down that tight yet. (It couldn’t have operated at the Bronx Terminal. Not only because of the gauge. The New York anti-steam-engine ordinance went into effect before the Uintah articulateds were built.)
Chuck (ex-Bronxite modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Fast tracks, would it be possible to describe to us through a step-by-step process on how you went buy figurging out your frog angles and the like. Which programs did you use? Some of us (including me) want to go beyond my jigs (#5 and #7-code 70) and would like to try my hand at some more complicated track work.
The design work for the terminal trackplan was done using the same parametrically driven 3D modeling system we use here at Fast Tracks. We don’t like to divuldge precisely which system we use as it is a core asset to our product line.
The trackplan was first drawn several years ago by tracing over published plans from a 1950 RMC article on the terminal. I used MicroStation for that and have imported the plans into the system we currently use.
All the trackwork built for this layout was done using custom cut assembly fixtures of similar design to what we offer on the Fast Tracks site. This has been a bit of a side project for me for the last few years (who says starting a business in Model Railroading will kill the fun!)
The frog angles range from around a 2.5 to a 4, nothing larger. All the frog points and switch points were formed free-hand, as I don’t have tools to match the numerous angles required. I lay one piece of the frog rail in place on the fixture and mark the angle needed with a scribe, then sand the rail to that angle by eye. The mating rail is shaped the same way. It isn’t unusual to make two or three verisons before getting one right. On smaller angle frogs this works well, once the frog size gets past about a #4 I prefer to use a PointForm tool for this step, much faster and accurate.
The rail is all soldered to PC board ties in the fixutre, ensuring accuracy throughout the entire piece of trackwork. The same files used for the trackplan were used to generate the fixtures so everything will match up pre
Pardon me, but that spelling made me emit a guffaw–as I was suddenly reminded of “Les Nessman,” of the old “WKRP in Cincinnati” show. Someone was ribbing him over his literal pronunciations, such as the golfer, “Chy-Chy Rod-wi-gwez,” and the dog, “Chy-hooa-hooa!”
Seriously: pretty trackwork! When I was a kid, someone took a small bunch of us teenagers(brave man!) into Milwaukee to Kalmbach, the first time for me to be in that old building on N. Seventh Street. We met Paul Larson, who was editor at the time, and I mentioned I was just getting into tracklaying, Code 70 N-S on individual wood ties. I’d always been impressed with the handlaid trackage of John Allen and Paul Larson because their tracks flowed so nicely. Larson told us he always made a full-sized template of turnouts and crossings on paper, then built his trackwork over the templates, which he’d drawn from the areas of the layout where they’d go. I suspect this is how most of the gurus did it–and there were a lot of them in the '40s, '50s, and '60s. I’m glad to see handlaying is coming back into vogue, as it improves the looks of a layout about a thousand percent over the old Code 100 Snap-Track and even the better commercial types–Shinohara NOT included, as theirs was wonderful.
Incidentally, I’ve been meaning to stick my oar in and remark that a good many model railroads, no matter how well done, lose a lot of realism by not including switch stands! My collection of Model Railroader runs from 1945 to present, and I’ve always wondered why more modelers don’
I thought it was “chewa-chewa”, but now that you mention it Chy-hooa-hooa rings a bell. Man, that was a good show! “As god as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly…”
I agree with your view on the look of handlaid track, there is a certain consistancy to handlaid track that is almost artistic.
Good point about the switch stands, I have been guilty of that myself on my old Port Kelsey Ry. The Bronx Terminal used the low Racor type, not sure if there is one available in HO scale or not, but I will have to hunt up 30 of them…
Last weekend I started work on rebuilding a brass model of CNJ 1000, a GE/IR Oil Electric boxcab that was the first non-steam engine used in North America in 1928.
I got this off of eBay earlier this spring and decided to replace the drive with a NWSL power truck and add on a flywheel.
I am about half way through the project now, if it keeps raining on the weekends I might finish it soon!
Next is to hunt up the right sound for this engine. I don’t think anything accurate is available commercially, but I have not done a very intense hunt yet…
I have a bunch of images of the work in progress on my blog at the link below…
