Grading continues into the dark, dark woods.
Over a shallow "river bed" and round into a cutting.

Looking further along the cutting with work proceeding on digging out the rock hard clay.
The track bed is being made wide enough for two tracks.

Hamish,



Thats my model of a bridge for 1:1 scale people!

It's made of real wood this one, the red colour is just the colour of the preservative I used on the laminated supports I made.

Your railway looks like it is going to be excellent, please keep us updated.

You probably know this already, but I found that staggering the joints on the flex track gave smooth curves to match the foundations and avoid kinks.

Regards
Cliff

Here is my other 1:1 scale bridge, this time made out of the recycled plastic.

Wow, Cliff, those two footbridges are so nice!

How do you trim the grass under them?

Yes, my joints (and the railway's) are staggered as well.

Slow progress is being maintained.
Grading continues through the dark, dark woods off to the top right.
The track bed has now been laid across the first gully, and starting around the curve towards the cutting.

Details of the first gully crossing.
The two support piers are 40mm black waste pipe, hammered into the ground between the ladder rails, then cut flush with the top and filled with cement.
Screws go through the sides of the rails into the pipes.
A careful test shows these piers are strong enough to stand on.
This might seem a little over-engineered, but I'm dreaming of a live-steam K27 one day...
The left hand abutment is square guttering downpipe hammered in and filled, the right hand one is a concrete building block.



This post has been edited by westcott: Jul 23 2009, 01:25 PM

That would get my vote. This is looking very good indeed.

Nico tried this some months ago.

Oo!, oo!, DHL has brought me three boxes! I wonder what is in them?

The short piece of code 250 track is there to give some idea of the box size.

Interesting it;s a track bed type I'm very interesting in trying myself, how exactly do you handly points/turnouts?

Hi Owain,

I'm just getting to that bit myself!
One way seems to do it like the track itself - the two ladder rails diverge to form the outer part of the new ladders.
One of the new inner rails joins the other outer to form a "V", then the other outer joins that one with another "V".

"High Ball John" has already built some points - we need to persuade him to post a close-up of one.

It might be worthwhile asking this same question on the American "MyLargeScale" forum.
Ladder roadbed is quite popular in the States.

I wonder how Brunel did it?
Perhaps I'll ask the chaps at the Didcot Railway Centre

Hamish

Hi Guys,

Sorry I don't seem to have taken any pictures of the points before I added the ballast, silly me.

Once the ballast is added, there is not much to see.

Cliff

I created the points base as follows:

This post has been edited by High Ball John: Aug 16 2009, 09:10 PM

In my case I used side pieces as well:

This post has been edited by High Ball John: Aug 16 2009, 09:10 PM

At last, some progress to report.
SWMBO has been keeping me busy.
The cutting is complete (but full of over-scale leaves), and lined one side with cut paving slabs.
The taller part in the centre will become a cut'n'cover tunnel, once track is laid and the other side is also lined with slabs.
I'll complete both roads through the tunnel, so I don't have to dismantle it later.

Further round, to where some of those uPVC bridges I have been building will span a deep bit.
Then out behind the summer house, back onto the lawn.

Looking very nice indeed Mr Westcott!

I love that slow lazy curve in post 65

Thanks, Stockers!
It wasn't deliberate - the tunnel had to be a bit in from the boundary fence on the left, then to the left round the trees in the distance, allowing room for double track.
Using the plastic tubing as a guide makes it easy to play with the curves until the best route is found.

Hamish.

Hi Hamish,its all looking fantastic hows your back holding up with all the ground work

That's really looking good, it's coming on really well

Looks brilliant cant wait to see trains running

Thanks all, for the kind words.

Nico, thanks, the exercise was fine for my back, I've even lost some weight.
<stereotype warning>
Being Irish, you will understand that I copied what navvies did - loosen the soil first with a pick.
</stereotype warning>
Next time you are passing, perhaps you might like to drop in, and we can build a bridge together.

Hamish.

Impressive stuff Hamish .

Yea cant beat a good pick by the way those to guys don't look to happy with the finished product