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I am in the process of building up the terrain of my layout. Does anyone have any pointers on when to lay the track in the tunnel? My tunnel in about 12" long. Also, I am using Atlas 55 track. The track in the tunnel is 10" radius. If you lay it before completing the tunnel, do you also do the detailing (painting, ballasting, etc)?
Thanks
Back in the days of the old west...the indians made model railroads out of beads, feathers, and small animal bones...and their shaman did a spirit dance to answer your question....and during the dance he say: oo noo hanni manni nateya...."when big moon is high in sky". (this only for code 55.....code 80 is different dance)
I am in the process of building up the terrain of my layout. Does anyone have any pointers on when to lay the track in the tunnel? My tunnel in about 12" long. Also, I am using Atlas 55 track. The track in the tunnel is 10" radius. If you lay it before completing the tunnel, do you also do the detailing (painting, ballasting, etc)?
Thanks
Say Woodville,
From what I've always heard & read, all track is always laid first to ensure the longest loco's your planning on operating on your layout can handle the radius/es your planning on using. Of course you could have previously tested your loco's for whatever the radius/es are going to be or read what radius/es others have used successfully for your specific locos. The main thing is that they run through there or any scenery without hitting it unless it some flexiable shrubry or grass along or in the rail.
Your scenery and tunnel/s are then constructed to form the shape and hillside your trying to create. As was said above, be sure to allow enough room in your tunnel, especially being it's on a curve, I also will have a few of them on my layout too, as loco's and some cars tend to hang over the outside of a curve more so then other so that is where you need to test your various loco's to ensure they won't hit any interior liner you might put in there, if your planning on doing that? I'd leave at least 1/4 inch extra clearance beyond the NMRA clearance gauge just to be certain you have enough room.
As far as ballast in a tunnel, are you thinking about running roadbed through a tunnel, I doubt seriously that under most circumstances that there was much of anything but the natural rock & dirt that may have been dug out of the hill in forming the tunnel that would used or required as in most all cases the track would stay dry and not require any kind of drainage such as the outside tracks do.
If you're going to use a plaster over cloth or wire mesh for your hill, just make sure none forms drips (stalagtites) hanging from the roof or you might have a rock fall at some time. (don't laugh, happened to me the first time I ran my 2 newly purchased BLI GE30-7's through a tunnel on the club layout at speed). Knocked them both off the track and it was quite a long tunnel and hard to access.
I don't see any point wasting effort to paint and ballast track that's going to be hidden inside a tunnel. I would lay the track before building the tunnel, and definitely lay track before trying to run trains there...
After you lay the track, and before building the tunnel, I would put a piece of masking tape or something similar (less sticky, so the glue doesn't get on the rails), so you won't get plaster or dirt on the rails. It will be a bear to clean after ward, and simply unzipping a piece of tape is really a lot easier than trying to invent something to clean track.
Make sure you can get to the track somehow. Every piece of track I have made inaccessible has had problems, like derailments or locomotives stopping on it.
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