Benchwork - Roadbed
Effective Grade
Designing a helix for a new layout. For the life of me I can not find a table that lists the effective slope induced by various radii. In other words, the smaller the radii of a helix, the more friction on the pulling force, thus a 2% slope at a 22" radius actually pulls like a 3.5% slope - or something. I remember using this table before. I believe it is from a J Armstrong book. Any help is welcomed Thanks
Foam Drum II
The is a continuation of the sound control tests I started in the Foam Drum Topic. For this set of tests I built an all new rig that will let me do side by side comparisons of track mounting options:
Not exactly roadbed - embedded rails (HO)
I plan to model a modern transload terminal that has several tracks embedded in concrete, both on the outside and between the rails. I'll be using Atlas C-83 flex with "wooden" ties.
I've been trying to figure out what kind of sheet product would be best to model the concrete - fun foam, styrene, or ??? I don't want to mess with plaster or grout.
Any suggestions on material and / or technique? My main concern is that the pavement be level both inside and outside the rails.
Finally... A Start!
With house construction and finishing basically done, it's time to get organized... Step one for organizing is to build storage shelves, which are conveniently, part of the benchwork for the railroad!
Built the benchwork shelving for under the St. Jean to South of Morris section of the layout with my youngest son tonight.
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What do you think about loose ballast?
There's lots of great discussion on this site now about foam / sound, etc. One thing keeps coming up; that is, it appears that when ballast is glued down to the roadbed either using diluted white glue or matt medium it greatly increased the transfer of sound and the overall sound level.
roadbed from shingles
I'm kind of a newbie. Anyone try using roofing shingles for roadbed? I couldn't find anything on the web.
Three Steps Forward.....
....aaaand two steps back.
I should really post more than once a year. But: Real Life. And spare time spent working on the layout instead of blabbing about it.
Anyway, an overview of progress to date:
Foam Drum
There has been a fair amount of discussion about how noisy trains are when running on unsupported foam. I've contributed my part, which consists mostly of theory. However, in acoustics, reality and theory are often a loose match, and I really have little experience with the materials we are talking about. So I decided to do some experiments.
As a test bed, I built a simple frame with a piece of 1" foam across the top:
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