Tapiola Parish Model Railway Club

Transition modules (line)

The basis for trackwork is the subroadbed, that is cut from topmost foam board with hot wire cutter...

.... and the sides sanded clean and glued to middle board.

Next comes the roadbed, cork gasket material from car supply shop (Biltema). This gives more form to the roadbed and assist in holding the pins before the glued ballast will hold the trackwork. The cork also helps in spreading surface preasure: one can easily push nasty dents to blue foam with fingers. Cork slighty assists here.

To reduce wear at interface, the first module had full size profile boards out of 3mm (1/8") styrene. Later modules wee only equipped with polystyrene strips at the track locatiuon only, the scenery part will be throught later. In this test module the cork was laid before the profile boards. I should be decided that shall we bring the cork on top of the profile boards or cut the cork form into profile board.

Thi sis a demo or test of fitting point motor to foam roadbed. the motor is a modified car relay. There is a 3mm (1/8") styrene pad glued uned the foam and the motor is fitted to this using drywall screw.

Tracklaying has started. To maintain parallel tracks, Opa constructed an easy jig to keep the distance equal.

The flex track (Tillig Elite) is "spiked" using clothes pins that were driven home after the line was curving the way we desired. we neede a rail joint within a module, and that was soldered before bending to prevent nasty kinks. After ballasting the module the pins may be withdrawn.

Station area

The Kauniainen station begins to get shape. Cork sheets are glued.

To get straight line through the station area fishing lies were drawn across the station modules at the angle we wanted the yard to be. The lines were fitted to pins and the other end of line was attached to weights keeping the lines tight. There were no profile boards fitted yet, so pieces of 6 mm (1/4 in) plywood were temporarily fitted to joints.

... yes, we did count the beginning and end of straight line and calculated the length of curves at the end (Note my huge rounding errors, HP 48 has too many buttons!) but the truth is that nothing beats the eye (and fishing line ;)

Tunnelitie underpass. The bridge locations were cut open and 3mm (1/8") styrene was used to make the core of the dridges. The foam was only cut away at the location of the bridges, so that the other end is still connected to main part while the glue sets.

Eastern end of Kauniainen station is mainly laid. As the distance between tracks is different at the station area we needed (ugly) tricks at the ends of the station. Here the curve of the other turnout no longer extend past the frog (crossing), tus we got an angle between the turnouts to assist in disguishing the tricks needed.

Here is a cloesup of prepared Tillig turnout.

The west end of that staion wasn't so succesfull. Nasty looking S curve!

East end wasn't so bad!

Stas inserts final pins to west end.

Here the west end subroadbed sheet is cut to shape.

Here is the middle sheet of blue foam. the wells drilled for turnout motors are clearly visible.

The subroadbed is glued to middle sheet and the lower sheet waits for being attached also.

Setting up at Turku Exhibition

We protected the rail ends with wooden blocks that we sellotaped to the ends.

After laying the modules on top of the steels we started to align the modules.

The space left for rail joiners was too short. We had to cut the joiners in half and we had to put the joiers proud and carefully bring the modules together while trying to align the joiners. Careful work. This was slightly easier than it looks as the steel tubes provided a level surface to slide the modules, so the danger of dropping either module at this stage was minimal! We are in a process of moving the printed circuit sleepers away from the interface to provide enough space for the joiners to be flush with the interface at setup.

No, the tracks weren't perfectly aligned after all!

Platforms