Swing Gate Construction

We have been plugging away at building my swing gate for entrance to the train room. A couple of good friends have come over to lend a hand a building this challenging thing. The challenge is it's curved with three tracks running over it. Well so far the three tracks have added way to much bench work for the gate and when it was swung open it didn't leave to much room for you to walk in. So what we have decided was to remove one track, my switch lead and shorten it to out the switch on the gate. It gives me a shorter yard lead but I was able to gain a few more inch's from off the gate which gave me more room to walk in. The one option that we talked about was removing part of the wall and swinging the tracks a few inches inward to give us a better curve to come at the gate but found it wasn't feasible for all the work involved for a few inch's. So we went with plan B and this is what's shown in the pictures below. We still have a lot of work to do as there is a track below on the gate that comes from the helix into the staging yard below Mitchell yard.

Laying Ties

In this Blog I will show you my method of laying the wood ties that I had cut up. I laid out the ties in a jig that I had made for the mainline and a jig that I purchased from fast tracks for the sidings.

This is the jig for mainline 

This is the fast tracks jig for sidings

This jig is one I made from printing out the switch templates from fast tracks and gluing them to a piece of wood.

Once I have placed the ties in the jig I place a piece of masking tape over them and they are ready to lay on the cork. In the photo below you can see the tie strips with the tape in place but not glued yet

Here is a video from my YouTube channel showing me laying down the ties. I use whit glue and as you see in the video I use a very simple tool to spread out the glue.

Cutting Wood Ties

Cutting ties

In this Blog I talk about cutting my own ties and I glue them down to the cork. First I decided to cut my own ties for hand laying the rail because I had done it in the past with another layout and thought it would be fun to try again. I find this part of the hobby very relaxing and time sure flies by. So I set out to set up the table saw and start cutting. Well it was so long ago when I did it last I completely forgot how to go about it. Finally I came up with what I thought was an easy way to do them. I set up the table saw with a scrap piece of plywood over the table and slowly raised the blade to cut through the plywood. This way there was no way that the strips of wood could fall between the blade. I set a 1x3 on the plywood and screwed it down the width that I wanted away from the blade. I posted a video on you tube showing the set up of the saw. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfgCv4TpsTk  I used 1x2 select pine cut into 2' lengths so they were easy to handle by one person. IN the photo below you see that after all the strips were cut I bundled them and taped them together to make it easy to handle when cutting them into 8'6 length's. To do this I used a small band saw. I cut the ties into 8'6 and then various sizes for the switch's.

Now all this was done last year. This year I have had absolutely no time to go outside and cut any ties. My 8 year old is very busy with sports and helping coach keeps me very busy. So this year I decided to try out ties from two different sources. Since I'm using Fast tracks switch jigs and their sweep sticks I thought about using ties from Mt Albert http://www.mtalbert.com/ This ties were purchased from fast tracks along with some of their twist ties. http://www.handlaidtrack.com/TwistTies-Wood-Ties-for-HO-Scale-Flexible-Crosstie-Strips-s/1989.htm The nice thing with these two products is the ties are the same thickness as micro engineering flex track which worked out great because there is no sanding the ties. My method of cutting required sanding once they were glued down.

Laying The Cork Roadbed

Once I had some bench work done it was time to draw some track centers and lay some cork.

I purchased the cork from two places. The first was Staples and then I found the same size roll cheaper at Lowes. The one from Lowes has a finer mix of crock pieces in the roll than the one from Staples. I have installed both types on the layout but have yet to put done ties and rail. I measured 3/4 " all along the length of the cork, then cut them into strips 3/4' wide by 2' long. The roll comes in 2'W x 4'L. Once I had all the strips cut it was time to glue them down. In the past I used a solvent based contact cement. This time around I used a water base cement. Lepage's contact cement was the one I went with. I applied cement to both the cork and the bench work. Following the instructions I allowed both pieces to dry, then applied cork to one side of the center line then on the other. I used a roller that's used for wallpaper. This works great for making sure the cork is pushed down on the glue for a perfect bond. This picture of Mitchell yard shows the cork that has already been laid and you can see the roller in the upper left.

Here is a video on my YouTube channel were I show you how I cut the roll of cork into 3/4" strips.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9lqOIZcFwE 
Hope you enjoy it and find some helpful tips.

Well it has been way to long since my last post here but I hope to change that. A lot has happened in the train room since I was last on here so I will have a lot of post coming until I can catch up with where I am on the layout. So let’s get started were I left off with the last post. We will start with some bench work.

In this photo I have started building the bench work for Mitchell yard. The brackets are made from 1x3 pine and ¼ inch plywood. I wanted to try something different than metal shelf brackets and I was also trying to get away from legs. In the photo below you can see a close up of those brackets that we made. They are attached to the wall with 2 ½” screws every 16” to be able to screw into the stud wall.

In this photo we have the island that runs down the middle of the room. The center wall is 1x3 studs screwed to the ceiling and the floor, so it’s solid. The far left of this photo is where my helix will be. The track that you see is for a return loop that will bring trains back into the staging yard below Mitchell yard.