The D&J Railroad -- From Scratch


tootnkumin said:
As I was unfamiliar with OSB (although I have seen it) I did a Google and found this comparison study done by Georgia Pacific which manufactures both types of building materials, makes interesting reading. http://www.nachi.org/osb-plywood.htm
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That's a pretty good summary. It's aimed at the construction industry, of course. Oddly, it ignores the greatest advantage and minimizes the greatest disadvantage of OSB in construction. The advantage is that OSB is not as slippery as ply, and is much safer as a roofing material. The disadvantage is that if you have roof and/or walls sheathed with OSB, and you get a a few days of rain, you have to wait three weeks for the stuff to dry before you can put the exterior surface on, and if it rains again during those three weeks you've got a real problem. Here on the wet coast, I won't spec OSB for winter construction, but have no problem doing so in the summer. But for applications where you want good sound deadening and stability, OSB is great. If you go back to the first page of this thread, and look at the third photo, you'll see one of its best applications - Trusjoists. I can't imagine building without them.
 
D&J RailRoad said:
All the roadbed plywood is 3/4". Most of it is cut about 8 - 10" wide for the roadbed. So it's either the plywood is changing dimensions or the rail. I'm inclined to think its the plywood. Last year, the basement reached the same temps, in the upper 60s, but I think the humidity might have been a bit higher. Its 26% down there now. The house is much dryer than it has ever been in the 3 years I've been living there.
Even if the vertical studs of the walls wanted to twist, I would think the panels of 3/8" plywood that is attached to them would bend somewhat and absorb the twist without putting strain on the roadbed that is laid across the tops of them.
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First, an apology. I didn't look at your pictures closely enough. Let's try again. In one of your first posts, you said, 'new house'. I thought you meant that it was a house that had just been built. But here you say, 'three years', so it's not a brand new house, which means that the studs should have acclimatized. Even if this winter's humidity is lower, the studs shouldn't move much after three years, although they might move a bit, depending on what the wood is. But looking at the pictures of the warped track, it looks as though it's the peninsula that's the location of the problem. So I'll go back to my first diagnosis. The three peninsulas and the one wall that forms a triangle are new. What did you use for uprights? Especially the peninsulas, where you have uprights with what looks like two foot plywood brackets attached to them. Again, if the uprights twist even a bit it'll cause the brackets to follow, or try to. But the brackets can't twist, as they are held in place. So four things can happen. (1) The screws holding the brackets to the uprights can detach; (2) The railbed can detach; (3) The railbed can twist; (4) The railbed can buckle. I think that you're saying it's the last that's happened, and are attributing it to a change in the plywood's dimensions. I don't think that's the case. I think it much more likely that the dimensional timbers are unstable, rather than the plywood. Plywood is like a sheet of paper - you can't put a compound curve in it. But you CAN twist it, and I think that's what's happening here. It wouldn't take much twist to produce the effect you have - say 1/4" over a four foot length.

I'm pursuing this because I'm thinking of anyone building a layout like yours, or even much more modest, with the concomitant effort and expense. If I'm right in my diagnosis, those people can save themselves a world of worry by choosing their materials carefully. To put it bluntly, a lot of dimensional lumber these days is garbage. ('Dimensional' meaning a nominal 2" thick or greater.) It comes from young trees, it's unstable, and I wouldn't use it for anything but firewood. The greater the size the better it's likely to be, as you can't get a 20' 2x12 from a 50 year old tree, so large dimension lumber is apt to have fewer knots and be more stable. Finger jointed wood is better than solid, as is laminate. Fir is better than pine. If you MUST use solid 2x4, let it sit in your layout room for a year or more to acclimatize.
 
A few more signals installed on the D&J Railroad. This is at the point were the fiddle yard meets the arrival departure track lead. The two tracks on the left are the mainline while the center right track in the yard lead to the A/D tracks. A local freight stops on the fiddle track while a slow oil drag pulls into the A/D tracks of the sorting yard. An auto rack train meets an intermodal on the mainline.

 
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Ken I've been following along for a while. I wish I had this much room. Looking great so far and love the signal work. I started my 18 x 11 layout in 2003. I used L-Girder and use 1 x 4 and 1/2" plywood with 1" pink foam over that. After first winter I got a few places along the long walls that buckled as yours did. After fixing the track and 2 more winters went by I thought the problem was gone. This winter I had the problem again, the layout is now 10 years old and I didn't think the wood would move any longer. The wood I used was in the basement for almost a year before I started building. It's just been a very bad winter everywhere.

Wayne
 
Thanks for the comments Wayne. Yeah, I anticipate having wood problems for a few more years. It isn't all that difficult to fix the track problems from the wood distortions. The benchwork design lends itself well to that.
 
Hi Ken,

Watching your progress motivated me. Thought you might enjoy this...

[video=youtube;R0MAR60B3P0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0MAR60B3P0&feature=c4-overview&list=UUiMZPqdbcyXWNZs0TFYRaow[/video]

The connectors I are mentioned are here:

http://www.miniatronics.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=4

The list price is high but usually the street price is better.

When I looked at the cost of a signal plus the electronics to drive it, I decided that the ability to wire up those little tiny LED wires on the signal to the connector at the bench and then just plug it in was worth the money. I really don't like soldering connections under the layout.

Anyway as I said in the video - thanks for the motivation.
 
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The video clip is set to private.
For the signal boards, I solder leads onto the small Digitrax boards at the desk then plug it into the ribbon wire under the bench at the signal site. Making the connection to the LED leads from the signal is easier when I have about 6 inches or so of wire to tie together and solder.
 
Whoops! Sorry about the - just getting started with YouTube - I think I have it set correctly now.

Those Digitrax parts are nice but they are designed to be used with the Digitrax controller which I'm not using. I don't know if they could be adapted to work with the RR-CirKits signal controller.
 
Ok, that worked. Interesting using the magnets to mount the signals. Makes for less damage if they get bumped when cleaning track or fixing rolling stock.
On another note, I could see the insulator track connectors and it brought to mind my experimentation with my turnouts and block detection. Way back when I finally got started with TCS, I isolated the turnouts for their own power section. Watching the train movement on the computer screen brought a moment in the view where all turnouts would change color when only one of them was occupied. When I started setting up section two of the detection system here, I decide to wire the turnouts as an extension of the block leading into the turnout. This seems to work out well and doesn't cause a problem with TCS. I'll post a video later today of my screen activity while running trains to illustrate. I'm working from home today due to the weather, so I should be doing my work type work.
 
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Hi Ken, Jerry

I've got four young grandsons and two grandnieces and I'm getting a little spastic in my old age, so I really wanted a method of installing the signals which would provide some protection. I finally decided that the magnets was the simplest approach. The place where I get my magnets has all shapes and sizes. I really only need one magnet but I couldn't find a metal washer of the correct size but I found magnets that were just right. The thicker one in the foam has a 1/4" hole which allows me to pass the micro connector right through the hole and down under the layout. The under layout wiring with the RR-Cirkits stuff is all tool free, no solder connections, so connecting the mating connect for the signal is a piece of cake.


I followed Herr Freiwald's advice and kept turnouts out of the blocks - though I did wire each turnout or turnout group with it's own detector - so if I ever need to I can "include" the turnouts as part of the blocks. There has been lots of discussion about including/not including turnouts in blocks - it's almost a religious thing. ;)


I just happen to be modeling an alternate reality version of the B&O so I get to use those neat signals with justification. The only issue is I have not been able to find any signal bridges with those type of signals.

The signal installation is on hold for now because I want to do them last to minimize damage but watching Ken's signals I had to install a couple just for fun.


The current project is wiring up the electro-magnetic uncouplers. I'm going to be attempting some automated coupling/uncoupling using TC. I'm building a special "power supply" to drive the uncouplers with some programmable features to try and maximize the reliability of the uncoupling process.


Talk to you all later!
 
I built a few of my own cantilever signal bridges and mounted the D signal head on them. They are available from Campbell as kits. Takes about an hour to assemble then a little longer to mount the signal.

 
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Nice,

I would have no problem building something like that but I cannot find the signal heads.


And how do you embed a video like that into this forum?

Thanks.
 
Hi Ken,

Thanks for the info.

That is one primitive web site. :rolleyes:

I'll have to find a source and try some out.
 
When you go to the window that you want to type your reply in, look in the header and you will see an Icon that looks like a vertical film strip. Click on that and the rest is obvious.
 
What about using steel studs for the framing of the layouts? Then plywood on top for tracks? Steel studs used in office buildings works.
 
I suppose you could give it a try but because the 2x4s are an integral part of the support to the benchwork, I think the steel framing might flex to much. When drywall is applied to the steel studs, that gives it strength. Also, steel studs don't offer as much adjustment surface for reseting drywall screws when adjusting the benchwork. I don't think I will be removing the wood from my layout to install steel though.
 
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