City Belt Line (N-scale )

[Wutter]

A question to those who do Free-mo-N what are the tolerances in the standards? I ask because the foam stands 0.026" higher than the top of the end-plates. I think its either, the foam is not exactly 2" or my carpentry is off.

A little bit overheight is okay, but what you want to make sure is that the tracks at the end are perpendicular to the end plates and also that you don't have a sudden dip or peak when looking from a side profile when approaching the endplates. That is what usually causes most of the issues in putting different modules together. If your foam is at a consistent higher offset compared to your endplates, it probably makes sense to shim up your ends by .020" or .025" to match and avoid a sudden dip down at the end. Also highly recommend using PCB ties on some sort of solid wood rectangle on top of the endplates that will stand up to a beating over time (the 1/8 luan plywood you are using would be fine for this, just don't want cork only on the ends)

[Slim Rail Mike]

Thax for the input. I would like to fix what I must,  before too many subsequent steps have been taken. Shimming the end plates seems the most practical approach.

[Slim Rail Mike]

Remediation

    A cabinet maker I am not. As previously stated the foam sits a bit high. The fix was suggested by Wutter.
I shimmed the top of the end plate with the correct thickness  of styrene.


Since the tops are now secured to  the frames, the end plates were checked for squareness, with a framing square. Of the six end plates rail will cross, two were square. (luck) Of the others three were out vertically by less the .02" in the 6" height of the ends,  one was out by about an 1/8th. This one got a piece of luan laminated to it. Once the glue set it was short work with a belt sander to get it square.
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    The first section of roadbed in glued on. The roadbed should all be down this weekend.
    The hinges for the legs I had ordered were too light duty, their replacements should be here today.
Slow motion progress in action.

[Slim Rail Mike]

I choose not too make to bay lower than the yard when I started. The reasoning was that the uncut foam would add to the rigid structure.

Now the tide needs to go out. I can think of a couple of approaches, but I’d like to hear how others have done something similar. Right now I'm leaning toward using a router, but oh what a mess of foam dust.

The cut off section of 1/8 inch luan will be the bottom of the water, after the area is lowered.



25th Street yard standing on it's own legs.
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[Slim Rail Mike]

There is a bottom to the sea.

    I tide has just started to ebb. The sea level is about 8’ below the grade of the yard. The hulls on the barges and the ferry M/V LAS Plumas are of ½ inch birch ply. That would be about 6.5 feet of free board.
So there will be a slight down grade over the ferry apron to the vessels.

    The approach to remove the foam, that appealed to me the most was to made a sled for the router out of metal angle and some blocks of wood. However I gave some thought to the constrains. One there is no dust collection system on my old router. Secondly my shop is in a shared space with lots of open storage. I’d be cleaning up pink foam from now until forever, and still hear about the dust I missed.

  So what was settled on was to cut a bunch of slots with the router while there was a flat surface. Most of the dust stayed in the slot and was vacuumed up as I proceed. Now the datum was established. The bulk of the foam was cut away with my slicing knife. It when pretty quickly.  Then a quick sanding with the random orbital sander. The tool does connect to the shop vac, so there was little mess.

  The sections still need some paint underneath and the fascia cut.

For now I can move on to some fun stuff like track laying and model building.

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[Slim Rail Mike]

Starting on the east end, with the rail ferry. Did a mock-up in card stock and used code 80 track, to check clearances and track spacing. I have wanted to do this model for many years but just couldn't fit it in to a traditional layout. Thank goodness for free-moN.

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Cut some deck plates and ties.

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[Ted Thorson]

Wow, you are making progress really quickly. I like the Las Plumas mockup.

[Slim Rail Mike]

Got some rail laid.

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There are now tracks across the ferry apron, and the first rail is on M/V Las Plumas.

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I had done two turnouts as trials a few weeks ago. The are not pretty but they work as far as I can tell. I've been rolling equipment over them, yet to try them with locomotives.

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The first real turnouts are going on the deck of the ferry.

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I usually model in styrene, but when I mocked up the superstructure with the pilot-house, I was surprised at how robust card stock and glue could be. So been working up the design in Inkscape, and will try my hand at paper modeling.
The big plus for me is the painting is done by the printer. We'll see how that works out after the rails are all on the boat.

[Slim Rail Mike]

Progress has been slow. I've worked on the water, layers of gloss gell with black acrylic, and gloss medium with some blues and greens.    I’m not please with the water, however I’ll not work on it more until the pier and ferry are in place. 

   As to the pier, it will be of simplified and frugal construction. Bamboo skewers, for pilings. Cut a few hundred pilings for the pier, and have them soaking in alcohol and ink. Old HO wood ties for cross beams. The stringers are omitted as they really can’t be seen. The deck is 1/8 inch plywood laminated with card-stock, sort of a mini MDO. The top surface of the deck is printed weathered boards on matte photo-paper. The bottom of the pier has printed guide line to line up the bents.

 Worked on some models in card stock from Team Track and Clever Models. This to get a feel how paper models are designed. Figuring out how to build the pilot house on the ferry.

 A bundle of Code 55 track arrived from Midwest hobbies. There is now enough track. The rail for the switches will be stripped from the track as needed.

Roughed out pier test fit for height.
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Yikes what a mess the work space is!

Dry fitting the decking
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[Slim Rail Mike]

Pier trimmed to finial size and decking installed. A waiting rails and pile bents.
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[jagged ben]

The water looks pretty good from here.
Will the pier get built up higher over the water level?

[Slim Rail Mike]

The pier will be a few feet higher than the ferry deck. What I'd like from the bay water is more of an oily green look. Need to mass produce the pile bents, the lay the rail. plus do railings and details on the pier.

[Slim Rail Mike]

Made a piano jig for the pier bents. Waxed it well with paste wax to minimize gluing the bent in the jig. The first ten of fifty plus bents are made up. [ Guests cannot view attachments ]

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[Slim Rail Mike]

Oops,

I am of an age that I can go to fetch something, when walking into the room I have forgotten what I went to get.
While figuring how long to cut the pier pilings, I must have added where I should have subtracted.
Should know better that do the calculations in my head.

After trimming the pilings to proper length the project is back on track.
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[Slim Rail Mike]

5/4/23


   The heart of this module is the ferry/car float operations on the WP. Thus the track work on the vessels, apron and yard need to work smoothly together. The pier is coming along. Working on the ladder to approach the apron. The turnouts  are going together better than the two on the ferry deck. 

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I tried moving some rolling stock over the trackwork and on and off the ferry. Not bad but need make some adjustments. Then on to the gantry to lift the apron. The actual movement of the apron will be via rods under the layout.

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  The ferry is to get a new superstructure. I’ve not done models out of paper before save for the mock-up bridge now on the ferry. There is a bit of learning curve. I’ve printed up another set of parts. Getting smooth clean seams is a small challenge.

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