UP THE CREEK: Peninsula Construction!
A regular report on the construction of a 1950s-something layout
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Part 3 - Laying out a staging yard throat and working on peninsula benchwork ...
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n episode two of my peninsulaconstruction saga I finished the helix (well, almost) and installed joists on the helix table to support the roadbed for the town of Browning. In this installment I’ll be working on the peninsula itself, finishing up the staging (lower) level’s roadbed and using paper turnout templates to figure out how to maximize staging track length while avoiding S-curves and keeping the turnouts as close to the benchwork edge as possible.
Peninsula Spine Charlie Comstock became the MRH editor in the March 2011 issue. Click here to learn more about Charlie.
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Page 21 • Mar 2012 MRH Column – Up the Creek, page 1
The spine of the peninsula consists of a series of 5”-wide risers cut from 3/4” plywood. If you looked under the staging roadbed you’d see that every third joist has an anti-warp brace lined up below it. I use two risers, one on either side of the joists with antiwarp braces creating a sandwich. The back edge of these risers will be the attachment point for the backdrop along the straight part of the peninsula, so it’s very important that the risers are in line with each other. If they’re off a little, the backdrop will have a noticeable “wobble” to it. The rear 5” of the Bear Creek yard’s roadbed will lie on top of the risers.
Figure 1 The process we used to achieve the needed riser alignment was fairly simple. I used a laser to line up a few key risers. Then used the edge of a 5” x 8’ piece of 3/4” plywood to set the height of the intervening risers and keep them from leaning.
Figure 1: Train buddy Mike Talviste clamping a vertical riser in place. The piece of plywood on top serves as a to-and-fro guide. We used a 4’ bubble level to set the height of each riser. Careful attention is needed for this task.
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