Gateway Subdivision


2Tracks

Ol' School
Hello all. Since I'm starting a new layout build, I'll start this new thread, Gateway Subdivision. I had already built 1 layout, (first one,) an around the room w/peninsula, split level, HO, 12x20 ft room, circa 1939-1952. (Lots of first-generation diesels) Here is the peninsula, split in half, the logging railroad destined for the piece of pink foam. The incline getting there starts behind you in the right-hand corner and runs for about 34-35 feet terminating up here. This is as far as I got with the logging rr, those are feeder wires sticking up from the track laying upside down on the incline, prepping for install. I have the freight railroad up & running, mainline & siding/spur track below incline, and the yard on the other half of the peninsula, lower rt of picture......

IMG_2327.JPG


The freight yard in operation, the entrance door from the shop on the right. A single track lift out bridge to span the gap (not shown.) Operations is with an NCE PH PRO-R DCC system. 14ga buss with 20ga feeders, both solid wire. All turnouts are manually operated, w/powered frogs, the new layout will be the same.
IMG_2326.JPG

After operating the freight railroad & learning about mainline running, switching operations, somethings that I hadn't known until now, I wanted more!
My railroad career had started with a freind of the family giving me what he had for track/engines/rolling stock, setting on a piece of 4x8 plywood, in 1966. I operated that plywood pacific (various loops,) for four years, during the summer, because that's when the weather was nice enough to set it up outside, just no place inside the house, (mom wasn't that keen on it inside anyway, o_O)
Fast forward to 2013 when I bought this house and divided the shop up for the layout room.
I operated this set up for about a year I suppose, and as I said above, I wanted more. More switching, some kind of staging so the rolling stock wasn't in boxes when I wanted to use it, and an expanded logging railroad. I don't know snot about design, so I had one done, and here is what I'm up against. (tongue in cheek)
Staging......
img025.jpg

Second level, GN freight railroad.....
New Layout.jpg

Logging railroad.....Pacific Lumber, that's what I collected equipment for over time.....
img024.jpg

Well, that's a heck of an order, 2 helices, three levels! That's ok, that's the way I want it. I like having that goal out there in front of me. I may not complete it before, before, uhh, well, you know, but, I have that goal in front of me! I derive just as much joy/pleasure/satisfaction from the beginning of bench work construction to train operations, it's all good!
I guess what it comes down to is perspective......as with pretty much everything in life.......
Ok, I got this thread started, hope you will follow along, and please feel free to comment, suggest, discuss, agree, disagree, whatever, I would say I'm maybe one or two steps above beginner, with a lot to learn. I hope somebody finds something useful as this goes along.
Jerry
 
Ken, Gary, Chris, thank you fella's.
I did get two walls & a corner cleared out the first day of January.
IMG_20220101_131905291.jpg

The previous layout I used the open grid bench work, with 2" foam on top, of which the peninsula is all that's left, above. (the plywood? I'm using that as a work bench)
For this rebuild, I'm going to implement a cantilever system topped with plywood & 1" foam board, on all three levels.
A couple of days ago I got the first of the brackets up. You can see on the far wall I had to shim the brackets to level them. The right side has no shims. The buddy that built the room found that the right wall, was out of plum almost 2 inches at the top of the stud. Since this is a 20 ft wall, I had him square it up & not worry about the 12 ft end wall. I had found out from the previous owner that when the shop was built, they had taken all the scrap forms/lumber and thew the building together.
Anyway, I thought I'd get the brackets level/square on the wall and then anything on top of them would be good.
IMG_20220113_040408477.jpg

IMG_20220113_040434806.jpg

To determine bracket positions, I overlaid the wall stud positions on the Track Plan sheet, and then from there, found where I could place the brackets and avoid switch locations. I got pretty lucky and only have one place where there's a conflict, on the main level, opposite the yard tracks thank goodness.
 
Last edited:
With the wall brackets located on the track blueprints, I needed to figure out plywood placement, so I made a couple of scale 4x8 sheets of plywood out of some scrap clear plastic sheeting that I had, and used them to see how I could maximize plywood use. I figured 7 sheets of plywood for the staging build, and that's with one extra full sheet for the, just in case, o_O
IMG_20220117_042240715 (1).jpg

One of the things I'll do for the corners, as in the upper left corner, you can see a dashed line, at a 45 degree angle from the corner of the room, that's were the two pieces of plywood will be cut and butt together. That way every piece of plywood will be supported in the corners by a wall bracket.
 
The Gateway Subdivision as operated day by the BNSF, runs from Klamath Falls Ore. to Keddie Cal., approximately 202 miles in length. Originally two different subdivisions, the Second Subdivision, in Great Northern's Klamath Division, and the Fourth Subdivision, in Western Pacific's Consolidated Western & Eastern Division. The Western Pacific built north from Keddie Cal. (that would be the North leg of the Keddie Wye,) to Bieber Cal. The Great Northern, built south from Klamath Falls to meet the WP at Bieber in the spring of 1931. Fast forward to mergers, buy-outs, & fallen flags of the 70's 80's & 90's, the BNSF has operations on the Gateway now.
Here is a pic of some new track construction at Klamath Falls, just south of the SP tracks. I left it fairly large so you could look at details. Interesting that the guy on the very far left has what appears to be the only pair of gloves on the worksite, and he's not even wearing them. And what are the guys doing in the center with the pry bars pushing down on the rail with one end up on a tie? I've never seen that move before. The water tower left of the crane, is still there. In the picture it belongs to a sawmill located on the Southern Pacific tracks. Today, tallow operations occupy the site.
img041.jpg


The back of the picture says, "twin bands of steel being pushed toward California by the Great Northern. Track laying has begun south from Klamath Falls." Stamped in red--JUNE 18 1931
img042.jpg
 
Hello all! Man, it's been a while! Had a lot of things going on the last couple of months, but it looks like I'm out of the narrow winding canyon on to the flatlands now, lol......it's all good! Just part of the process of obtaining more modeling time! YEAH!
On this build I was advised to start at the bottom & work my way up, having what I feel is a reasonable amount of mechanical aptitude, that sounded good to me. I'm new at this, didn't know of a reason not to start there.
If I hadn't mentioned it before, any of the building techniques throughout this build are my choice, it's the stuff I'm comfortable with. I will always incorporate somebody else's idea into my project if it is going to help things along.........
OK, let's get on with it....more brackets & bench work
IMG_20220221_094945365.jpg


Staging started, then it's down the long wall to the start of the peninsula. Helix will be on the left.
Earlier in the post I had talked about how un-square the walls were in this shop, well the floor is not any better. When they poured it, it looks like they leveled it off by eye and called it good...NOT!
IMG_20220221_094953672.jpg



With the point of attachment for the peninsula established on the wall, (and the tape on the floor), I secured the uprights with the bracing, making sure they were vertical front to back as well as side to side. Remember the floor issue? Look at the feet of the uprights. Those are shims between the feet & floor to help fill in the gaps & help add some stability to this whole mess. I marked the shims, cut them off and then reinserted them with a blob of wood glue to hold in place.
In an effort to help minimize expansion/contraction issues, every thing is getting painted. Yes the plywood is painted on both sides. We have a local building supply store here that has pre mixed paint on sale. For $13.00 a gallon, I couldn't pass that up.......
IMG_20220224_100713292_HDR.jpg


Here is were the peninsula has a dog leg in it to the next section. Because of how unsquare this room/ building is, I was sure to use the same reference point (wall) on what ever I was putting together. Like building the peninsula, I used the same wall to take the measurements from.
Can't be too hard huh? It's not rocket science! 🤣🚀

With the reference point (tape) in place, we'll build out the rest of the peninsula support structure.
IMG_20220224_100719609.jpg


To compensate for the dog leg angles, I measured what the angles were in the track plan, and cut them on the two opposing uprights. I then split a 2x4, one for each side, and attached them with some 4" torque head screws. Now I have some place to attach the bracing.
IMG_20220226_121558136.jpg


Here is a better view of the off set of the "dog leg"
IMG_20220226_121043133_HDR.jpg


The peninsula ready for some decking.
IMG_20220302_104721428.jpg


I wanted to cut the decking for the end of the peninsula out of one piece of plywood as much as possible, which means I'll need to cut a notch in it for the up rights. I cut the end piece out and laid it on top of the uprights. With some make shift plumb bobs, (3, one is behind the support stick,) I hung the plumb bobs off the spots of the decking that I hade located earlier as reference points. When these three points were lined up with what was on the track plan, I marked & cut the slot for the uprights.
IMG_20220302_120928482_HDR.jpg


Decking applied, dog leg section has brace across the top.
IMG_20220307_080739148_HDR.jpg


Next installment--helix action!
 

Attachments

  • IMG_20220302_104731316.jpg
    IMG_20220302_104731316.jpg
    184.8 KB · Views: 96
Since I had decided to use plywood for this layout rebuild, I have to keep a close eye on what is available. Of course, I want to keep with consistency in the plywood thickness. I figured with my bracket spacing, 5/8 plywood would work well. So, when was 5/8" thick plywood not manufactured as 5/8" thick? I do admit, it has been quite a while since I've bought plywood, dependent on the thickness! My choice for 5/8" is now 19/32. If I wanted to go 3/4", it is 23/32....here's where they fit on the scale..
IMG_20220323_013916418.jpg


I ended up buying the first couple of sheets from the big box store because the local retailer happened to be closed on that particular Saturday. When I went to the locally owned store to get more plywood, I asked about a better price if I bought 15-16 sheets. Nope, that didn't matter. Ok, give me two sheets of your 5/8" plywood I says. When I got it home to unload it, I find that it was thicker than the box store stuff, by a whole ply. So I took it back to exchange it, and the guy was about 1/2 hissy because I wanted to trade it. To cover my base, I took a piece of "the other" plywood with me for a measurement. After some doing, he got me the correct plywood, and I'm out'a there! What a PIA this guy was! Needless to say, it's back to the box store for the plywood source. But, you have to be diligent with these people too, my last trip in there for plywood, they had the 3/4" stuff were the 5/8" belonged, so I had to wait for them to swap things around. I got two more sheets home & something seemed different about them. Yup, they are the correct thickness, ahhhh, it was the number of ply's. The first stuff was 4 ply, these last two sheets are 6 ply----different manufactures----
At least it's still available.....
Be Carefull.....
Be diligent!.....
 
Yeah I went thru that as well, another problem besides varying manufacturers is plywood being metric sizes called fractional.
Even two by fours, which haven’t been actual two by fours for a century, can be metric sizes with fractional labels.
 
Staging bench work is done, so now it's the helix build, from staging to the main level. I didn't want to install the main level support brackets until the helix was built so I would know exactly were the main level would be located. I didn't want to pre install the brackets before the top of the helix was done, and then have to tweak the helix or bench work brackets because some measurement didn't work out.
The staging benchwork is currently just setting on the brackets. On this track plan, the main level benchwork foot print is exactly the same as staging bench work, (up to the turn of the peninsula,) so all I have to do is trace & cut.
Once I've traced & cut these pieces, I'll leave the staging benchwork off to afford better access to the main level for wiring and assembly.
When building the helix, I wanted the first (base) ring out of one piece. I just wanted the least amount of joints in the base ring, (there's one.)
With the base ring complete, it's build the bench work for it.
IMG_20220307_111613237.jpg

I just built a simple frame with a top on it, levelers in the legs, and brought it up underneath the lip of the staging plywood lip & leveled out.
Here is the frame in place.
IMG_20220311_090026537.jpg

The track work for the helix will come off staging in about the middle of the radius in the bench work shown above. This will make the trains run in a clockwise motion up to the main level.
I stacked the ring sections on top of each other and marked them for the riser supports, so I could secure them to the bottom of the ring section before installation. There is a riser at the section ends and an intermediate riser in between the end risers.
IMG_20220312_133758732.jpg

Sections getting the paint treatment, (sides & bottom)...........
IMG_20220311_085947500.jpg
 
Thought I'd get started on helix track wiring, attaching feeders & rail cleaning.
IMG_20220317_062925782.jpg

IMG_20220317_063459450.jpg

For rail cleaning, I used the Woodland Scenics Rail Pal pad, the lighter maintenance side. It seemed to have the least amount of abrasive in it. I saw no need to use something with a heavy abrasive. I only made one trip down the rail with this pad, giving it a pretty good scrub.
The WS pad I used is on the left, compared to the Peco block on the right. I was trying to show the difference between the abrasives in each pad. The Peco pad is pretty heavy with abrasive.
IMG_20220328_024411658.jpg

After the WS pad, I cut the outside edges of another WS pad, out of their Rail Tracker Cleaning Kit. I used this pad to clean the gauge face of the rail. New pad on left.
IMG_20220328_013828283.jpg

After these two pads, I used the white felt maintenance pads (also out of their RTC Kit) with mineral spirits for the final cleaning. I used a dremel tool with an abrasive impregnated tip to cut grooves in the felt pads to help clean the gauge face besides the tread portion of the rail.
IMG_20220328_021138218.jpg

It took two of the felt pads, (both sides,) to clean the rail to my satisfaction, and that was pretty well scrubbing the rail too.
The pad on the right is the last of the cleaning...I'm good with that......
IMG_20220328_023136612.jpg
 
Hi regme, I used the open grid bench design where I could install the incline risers on the crossmembers.
IMG_2032.JPG

From the track plan, I had to determine what height the riser would be at any given crossmember. I would install two risers several feet apart, and I had a good straight board that I laid across the two risers, and filled in the rest in between.
The incline with sub road bed.
IMG_2041.JPG

Here is the peninsula with the upper deck...
IMG_2043.JPG
 



Back
Top