Research to do with G scale railways.

Garden Railroading
1

I havent been on the Forum much lately, as I have been working on my area 3, as my better half has released some money for me as it is the new financial year here in Australia. Anyway I have done some research in 2 areas and I would be surprised if it will help any one, but you never know. Those areas are 1) Size of weep holes and, 2) curing time of Anchoring concrete (cement) If you do get any help from this informationm please post a can of beer to me at my place and you all know where i live.

  1. I drilled a number of different sized holes in a 9 mm piece of marine ply to determine what would be the best size; as it must be big enough to let water through and to allow a standard sized Johnson and Johnson cotton bud, so we could paint them on the inside. Small enough not to let too much ballast fall through.

5 mm and 5.5 mm were too small, 6 mm was ok as was 7 mm, but we found the ideal size was 6.5 mm or a bit less than 1/4 ". This was done at 25 deg C and 55 % humidity.

Oh weep holes here in Oz are used, so that water won’t build up inside something and cause it to rot or fall down with the weight.

The other is to do with curing of Anchoring cement. At 13 deg C it took about an hour to go of * at 17 Deg C it took 30 minutes and at 20 deg C 20 minutes.

Then it went up to 26 deg C and it went off and started to clog in about 5 minutes. It is winter time here and very cold, so we can’t do any real research at higher temperatures but I expect that it will be unusable at 30 Deg C or above and am looking at usiong iced water to slow things up.

  • by going off, we mean that we can safely remove a moulding from a mould without it breaking.

I hope this is of interest and of some help.

Ian.

2

Im not surprised that not much interest has been forthcoming about this subject, unless you wi***o do these two things you wouldn’t be interested I would say. However i am surprised that no one else is not getting into moulding concrete (cement) or worried about water buildup in elevated structures.

Ian

3

As you know Ian, I am building my land forms from brick mortar over wire screening and provide weep holes under my track and in planting pockets. I have found that larger holes can be used if you place window screen over them to hold the ballast etc.

OLD DAD

4

Ian, Are you using a release agent? If its to brittle add Portland cement for strength. I know when pouring concrete the dryer it is the stronger it is. Also if you can keep it wet after it has flashed out, burlap bags are commonly use by concrete co. to slow down the disipation of moisture during curing to prevent cracks.