An O&N local moves southbound (above) past the station at Speculator. The main- line is code 70 flex track. The sidings are code 55 and most of the turnouts are scratchbuilt. Downtown Speculator (right) is relatively quiet as the July 4th holiday approaches. The layout features buildings from a variety of manufacturers, as well as some scratchbuilt structures.
on the upper. Each elevator consists of three 1″×8″×8′-0″ planks with three code 100 staging tracks on each board; they are independently powered by high-torque motors with a chain drive to ¹⁄₂″ threaded rod acting as augers for slow-motion movement. This entire unit was engineered, designed and welded by Brian Curry MMR, and I am deeply indebted to his ingenuity and effort. Mike Lamond designed, built and pro- grammed the separate micro-processor and push-button control for these stag- ing elevators. I like to refer to the brains unit as “The Lunar Module.” Now for the layout between all this: the benchwork around the walls uses traditional “L” girders tied to the wall studs, but the peninsula’s construction is exploratory, using 4′-0″ long, “L” girder arms simply bolted and glued onto the wall joists. After setting the riser loca- tions for a 24″ minimum radius, we glued and screwed on cleats with risers, mak- ing sure that the cleats were level first. All the benchwork was pre-drilled, with coarse thread screws and yellow glue setting it all up. For decades I was sold on spline lat- tice sub-roadbed construction based on a two-part article in Model Railroader from 1970. Now it was time to try it. Al McKie showed up with bundles of twelve-foot long lauan mahogany strips and a box of hundreds of ³₄″ cubes of pine to use as spacers. We were all set. This method is super quick, is ultra
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
strong, and does not waste material. On top of the spline, we yellow-glued ¹⁄₂″- thick Homasote®
strips cut 2″ wide for
single track and, once this set, the en- tire cantilevered roadbed became ex- traordinarily stable and strong. Next, we installed commercial Homabed®
,
now California Roadbed (calroadbed. com), with yellow glue for the final con- tour.
The mainline track is code 70 Micro Engineering flex track, while some sid- ings are code 55. I used code 83 Atlas flex track only for the ore dock ap- proach, which is hidden behind an ur- ban backdrop at Ogdensburg, and all staging uses code 100 Atlas turnouts and flextrack for durability. I prefer unweathered flex track for its ease of work ability and get the track all set before laying it down. Each section is cut to exact length, end- of-section ties are removed, the ends of the rails are dressed, all of the curves are tweaked-ever-so-slightly into an
exact match to the roadbed, and all mainline track ties evenly spaced. Then, when this is done, I lay down a thin layer of latex Henry 237 Acousti- cal Ceiling Tile Adhesive®
with a wood-
en craft stick, working quickly as there’s little time to spare. As for turnouts on the main, at first I used a mix of commercial and scratch- built ones. Now I install code 70 No. 6’s from Fast Tracks, which I build at the work bench. First, I use Campbell pro- file switch tie material between the printed circuit board ties on the Fast Tracks template. The Campbell wood ties are stained, then glued with cyano- acrylate gel to .010″ thick pieces of styrene sheet to closely match the thickness of the printed circuit board ties. I lightly rough the bottom surface of those turnout rails remaining sta- tionary, then use cyanoacrylate gel to glue each Campbell/styrene panel to the bottom of those rails. As a result, these turnouts have a sufficient, se-
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