To draw the original plan (above left) CorelDrawwas used but any vector-type graphic program is fine. The drawing it produces will give modelers an idea of how much lumber and plywood needs to be used for the layout. Another “layer” of the drawings (top right) shows the six 4′-0″×8′-0″ rectangles of sheet plywood and the arrangement of the roadbed pieces on them. The radius and easement measurements (right) are shown for the layout’s Section O. This gave the builders the idea of cutting out multiple track sections at once to save both time and extra work.
more and more commercial printers catering to personal computer outputs, there might be a local one with a large format, roll-fed printer capable of do- ing full 4′-0″×8′-0″ sheets of paper. As we finished up the benchwork and were facing the tedious task of trans- ferring center points, radians, track centers and easement lines from the scale drawings to plywood we decided to explore this more.
Rob looked around and found a place that could print large sheets. The next question was how much it would cost.
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
The answer was a surprisingly-afford- able $0.50 to $1.00 per square foot for black and white print-outs, depending on the weight of paper used. We settled on 35-pound paper that cost $24.00 a sheet before sales tax. All we had to do was create individual black and white Corel Draw files of each of the six 4′- 0″×8′-0″ sheets of roadbed templates and convert them to Adobe PDF format for printing. We received two of the six needed prints in about 24 hours and quickly developed a way to glue the print to
the plywood and cut out the roadbed segments. Cutting all the roadbed pieces from the first 4′-0″×8′-0″ sheet took about five hours of work start to finish. That included some time to think out how to best proceed, time for the glue to dry, and time for snacks (important!). We estimate that using the traditional method of manually drawing the roadbed shapes onto the plywood sheet would have taken at least that much time if not double. Best of all, there were none of the “Uh- oh’s!” that typically arise with the usu-
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