I printed out my track plan full size. There’s no Kinko’s or similar service near me that I know of, so I just printed it out on hundreds of sheets (well, about 120) of regular paper. It was like putting together a giant puzzle, lining it all up, but it is finally DONE.
Now I need to transfer the track outline to my extruded foam benchwork. I’ve been using a ‘pattern wheel’ which is bacislly like a minitature pizza cutter, usually used to transfer pattern parkings to fabric for sewing. It sorta works, but doesn’t leave a very definite mark in the foam. I won’t have a second chance at this, I can’t pull up any of the plan to check progress and expect to get it all back down in the same alignment, so this has to work the first time through. Anyone got a better idea?
Try slipping carbon paper between your plan and the foam board,then with a fairly hard pencil,trace over your plan.It should transfer to the foam.If you’re lucky, the pressure of the pencil will even indent the foam.
I did not make a copy of my layout. I just took the layout I wanted , took track and just bagan outlining it with a black marker. I just started cutting out the foam for the canyon as well as the elevations. So far so good… I need to pick up some track bed and get ready to start laying track. Joseph
A track plan is a guide, not a machining blueprint. In the real world, there are all sorts of things that will render parts of a track plan inaccurate when transferred from the paper to the benchwork.
Don’t worry too much about getting your plan placed exactly onto the bench. Many modelers get too bogged down in this picky, and almost always wholly unnecessary, detail. I’ve got a 12x25 three deck layout, and when people ask me for my plan, I refer them to the prototype track charts and photos I’m using. Everything else is up to the basic benchwork I put up first. Once I engineered decent grades and aisle spaces, I filled the rest of the room with tabletop, and started laying track. Instead of siting there for months agonizing over how to squeeze in a third #6 switch into “that corner over there”, I’ll spend an hour or two working through the problem on the benchwork, and actually BUILD my layout, rather than just draw it!
Actually, once you make the perforations with the pinwheel, you should be able to use a felt pen to mark the foam through the little holes, and then you should be able to connect the dots when you pull the paper up.
You may just want to draw a grid on your foam board[12" or 24"]depending on whats on your original plan, transfer down the location of the major switch or crossing locations then connect the straight track or flex track between the turnouts.There is a good chance that you wont match the printed plan anyway-it’s still going to take a lot of fudgeing & adjusting to get things to fit.Just use it as a guide
After lining up the track on the board, with the points in position and taking sight lines along the track, I then looked back at the original track plan. It’s amazing how much more detail will go onto a sheet of paper than onto a board with real track in your hand! Guessing the size of points and radius of curves that can be fitted onto the layout is just that - guessing!
Put the paper layout to one side and start building.
I printed out some of the more involved trackwork on fanfold computer paper and was able to get my printer to print a 3 sheet strip eliminating lots of taping and joining but also making that process easier. However, I laid out the curves on the Homasote with a tramel (pencil on a stick) and used the bender board technique to draw easments.
Well, I got ‘lucky’ and the impressions in the foam were enough to be seen once I removed all the paper. I was able to go over the marks and darken the lines. Kinda looked interesting seeing the whole plan is full size laid out, of course I didn’t take a picture for my construction progress page, I went right to installing roadbed. Ah well. I do know that next time I will NOT bother witht he full-size thing and try to transfer it. On my previous layouts I just had a rough idea of what I wanted, lined up the turnouts, and filled in as requred. This time I went whole-hog with a track plan - and my plan IS accurate, I used CAD and even the benchwork is drawn in with the supports VERY close to where they actually are. So I know what will fit and what won’t. I will likely continue drawing the next pahse using the CAD software, but stop at printing out whatever fits on a single piece of paper. It does help that the rest of the layout will be linear along the walls, and I will likely continue to build my 2x8 boxes until I need a shorter piece to fill in to a corner. Blowing up a section that is 2x8 onto 1 sheet of paper will be big enough to get the idea, if I really wanted to be picky I could get some legal-size paper.
It worked out well - there is only one turnout where a cross brace interferes with dropping a Tortoise down from the top, and that is simply fixed by sliding the whole crossover 2" to the left.
OK try this. I laid the copies on the fiber board and using an AWL I punched small holes every 1/4 in. or so. Then I just connected the holes with a marker.
TOOOO Simple.
If you want to have the plan plotted full size, try a local Engineering/Drafting/Printing shop. A local Fab shop may have one if they do their own design. They will probably have a plotter available to do this. Fortunately, I am a draftsman and I have my own 24" color plotter with a roll feed. I can plot 24"x50’-0". I just plot centerlines and then do the pinwheel trick and a black marker.