Layout Progress as of 3/14/2009

This week I finished the spline roadbed in the Emerson area of the layout. After completing the roadbed, I used a handheld planer/scraper to scrape the dried blobs of glue off the top and bottom of the roadbed. I was not going to scrape the bottom of the roadbed, but all of those blobs of glue hanging down was bothering me. After scraping the bottoms, I realized it was a good thing to do since I would need a flat surface for mounting Tortoise turnout motors. Here is a view of the finished spline roadbed in North Emerson:



Completed spline roadbed in South Emerson:



Overall view of spline roadbed in Emerson and onto the base of the future helix:



I was going to build a temporary return loop around the helix base, but decided instead just to coil the end of the mainline around the base and terminate it where it meets itself. This coil of track will act as a temporary staging track. By doing this, I don't have to put any temporary track in the visible area and don't have to worry about building scenery around any temporary track. Here is the temporary staging track coiled around the inside of the helix base. The roadbed that has the clamps on it will be the end of the line:



Finally, here are two views of how I built the spline roadbed for the turnout at the south end of the Emerson passing siding:





In the previous two pictures, you can see how I drove a drywall screw down through the center of the roadbed to permanently fasten it to the riser. I did this in every location where the roadbed was resting on a riser.

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