hi everyone.
I am trying to tie thing up in the decison for my layout. On a few layouts, i have seen the term cookie cutter. I am just curious why its called that and if it changes how i should approach them. Thanks.
Basically, cutting into a sheet of plywood (like you would cookie dough) and installing risers underneath to increase elevations, the positive is it makes a smooth transition from level to a grade.
Nice example above!
If you have made wafer-style cookies, and not the drop style where you lump the dough on the cookie sheet, you have to roll the dough flat and somewhat thinly. Then you use a cookie cutter of a certain shape and size to make the cookies that must then be transferred to a sheet and baked.
With cookie-cutter sub-roadbed, you make curved and straight widths of plywood that must be supported on risers. It isn’t necessary, but often such arrangements are on open-framed benchwork, including the type that uses L-girders and joists.
In case it has escaped your notice in the photo above, one of the two ends can be left attached to the larger plywood from which it is cut. This allows a natural and smooth vertical curve into the grade that follows. Unless the change of elevation and the grades to it are very shallow, you won’t be able to leave the other end that way. It will have to be freed so that the rest of the length can rise and shift toward the anchored end. You’ll have to create matching transition out of the grade on that end. The good news is that you can insert a piece of plywood and anchor it firmly closest to its end. Then you can make it rise in a natural vertical curve just as its opposite is doing.
Crandell
The cookie cutter method is one of several used to try to give the perfectly flat traditional table top form of benchwork something of a realistic and varied profile. The “easiest” form of cookie cutter is, as shown above, to raise the cut piece (easiest because the support joists can be left as is), but with care and pre planning for placement of the supporting joists it can also head down. And it isn’t just for track – general scenic features such as a ridge, or a gravel pit can also be created using the cookie cutter technique. As you can see with care it lets the natural tension of the wood create a very smooth and natural vertical easement for a grade.
Somewhat related is the cutting out of an irregular shaped hole and mounting another – and obviously slightly larger – piece of plywood below it, to create a pond or creekbed or similar depression.
This may sound obvious, and in a sense it is obvious, but it is funny how long it took people to dare to make cuts into their plywood table tops. You have to get into a “hey it’s only plywood” frame of mind before making those first cuts, even though in theory the cookie can be uncut, so to speak.
And yet another method to introduce some variety of elevation intoa table top type layout is to put all track on elevated roadbed so that your flat table top – your absolute ground zero – is nonetheless many feet below track level.
Dave Nelson
Certain portions of the CR&T, city areas with a grade to an overpass, will employ cookie-cutter while other layout areas will use box-grid and L-girder.
Thus: Benchwork can be a combination “of types” used to address the type of “sub-roadbed/roadbed/track” needed in the benchwork planning process.
For a cookie-cutter overpass – Be sure it is secured by “wooden bridge piers” to the plywood base before final cutting out for the railroad bridge itself.
Yes, use cookie-cutter to get grades started and then switch to a separate piece of wood for the elevated section. Otherwise the basic plywood can become compromised.
I had a friend who tried to cookie-cutter all elevated portions of his layout. It was a sort of a folded figure-8. What happened was the two upper tracks crossed toward each other and it ended up that there was only one 3 inch section holding the plywood board together in the center of the one loop. Made a very unstable base. They had to brace it with cross beams anyway. The crossbeams were wobbledy so they had to run side beams. Then instead of using 1x4 or 1x3 or even 1x2 they used 2x4s. Gad what a heavy mess that was hard to work on. Just running a new wire under it became a chore.
I refer to my construction as, “Cookie-cut sub-roadbed.” That translates as plywood shapes about four inches wider than the track plan, leaving about two inches on the outside of the outer track centerline. The only place where I expect to use most of a sheet of plywood in one saber-sawed piece is at my (still to be built) main station. My benchwork, basically steel-stud, “C acts like L,” girder design, resembles an under-construction skyscraper.
Since I am modeling an area where the terrain stood on edge and the only level track was at stations I have no use for the traditional flat table top. In fact, there is one place where there either are already or will be five levels of track, only the topmost one of which will be visible. My “Netherworld” of hidden staging and thoroughfares will be far more extensive (and complex) than the visible world it supports. That’s what you have to do when you start with a specific prototype - a line that saw, and still sees, over 100 train movements on a slow day.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)