Brafferton Update - 5. Trackwork Pt ii

Suitably enthused by another North East Area Group meeting, here is the next step forward on the track side of things. A couple of people asked about the track template at the meeting: Using Coreldraw, I merely drew the track radius to scale with lines demarking 0.5" either side then copied and pasted this in an offset manner. I then printed off the bit half way down at full scale to gain suitable templates. These were substantially overlapped to ensure accuracy. Below is a jpg (reduced) of the drawing I did:


Similarly, I needed to accurately mark where the track beds cross the board joins; the track starts in the middle, sweeps to the front and then goes back again. This is merely acheived by offsetting the centre of the track circle against that of the baseboards. Again a full scale drawing was made on Coreldraw and the bits I needed (ie the joins) were printed out:



And attached to the actual baseboard with Pritt:

You will note that the template for the joins shows double track; on this baseboard there is only single track, so I have clearly scribbled through those markings not in use:

As I mentioned earlier, the trackbed will be raised up on blocks of ply. Using a steel rule and Stanley knife, I simply scored and snapped multitudes of little ply squares:

In the next bit I'll show you what I did with them!