Campers tape done!

Campers tape is now down on the entire layout. I finished installing the switch machines last night and the campers tape today.

Above you can see one of the places that I just finished.

Now on to the Homabed, but that will have to wait till next weekend because the wife and I are off for an overnight at Catalina Island which is located off the coast of California.

Chris

Installing switch machines in 2" of foam

With the half of the layout that is 2" of foam for the tabletop I found a way to install the Tortoise switch machines that mounts them just below the switch. This video below shows how, enjoy.

It is also on youtube here.

Chris

Transfering Trackplan and Laying Roadbed

It's a new year and time for an update on the B&SW!

I spent a lot of time tweaking the track plan, about 25 different designs for the 5x9 and 16 with the 6x10 so I wanted to make sure that the plan transfered from screen to reality. The best idea I could come up with is to do a full size print of my track plan and use that to draw my track plan onto the bench work.

The image above shows the full size track plan laid over one of the sections of the layout.

The next problem is how to get this plan on the foam. The solution I came up with was using a tool I got from a pumpkin carving kit. The kit came with a small tool that can be used to transfer the face templates onto the pumpkin. The tool has a small wheel with spikes on it. The idea is the spikes are large enough to puncture through the paper and into the pumpkin.

As you can see above I used it the same way to pucture through the paper onto the foam.

The image above shows the result of this process and traced with a marker

The three images above shows the results (and as you can see my puppies were helping)

The image above shows the Campers tape that I am using for a sub-roadbed as shown in the Model Railroader how to book "How to Build Realistic Reliable Track"

These last two pictures shows the final roadbed product using homabed roadbed. This is now done for half of the layout. Now I just need to get the other half done.

~Chris