I'm hoping to designate 2021 at the 'year of significant progress' on the new railroad!
Along with the normal holiday time of year stuff, I also spent time preparing to work on the railroad. That meant cutting a lot of plywood needed to make risers. I had a lot scrap material from the reflooring of my bathroom as part of the grandiose bathroom remodel.
All risers have been constructed in a similar fashion. I ripped all material into 2.5" strips. The strips are trimmed into 30" pieces as a general rule. Risers legs were cut from the same material. Each riser gets 3 legs. They are glued and clamped to the 30" horizontal riser.
I made roughly 50 risers. However, I'm limited by the number of clamps I have available. Thus I can only make 11 risers at a time. I keep them clamped for 24 hours to ensure thorough drying and maximum strength ...hopefully!
I installed the risers along the west wall before heading into the corner and to the right under the window.
If you've been following my blog, one thing that I've focused on is making the benchwork around the window strong enough to support one or more people. The window to the right of the corner is the egress point in the event of a fire if the normal stairs are not available. It is important that the benchwork is strong and solid.
The picture below shows the peninsula risers installed. All risers are 39" wide and have a fourth leg added for strength.
Up next will be to add a few risers to the right of the peninsula and install the already cut piece of horizontal plywood. I'll also need to cut the plywood deck for the end of the peninsula. Then install the drywall sub-roadbed. And paint it of course.
Once that is complete, main level track laying will commence!
One of the other projects I began was the weathering of plastic decks for flatt cars. First I scrape the deck with a Zona saw to score the deck to get a wood grain effect. Next is a #11 Xacto blade to put gouges into the deck. I then apply Apple Barrel craft paints (brown and gray). The paint is very thick, so I put a small amount of point onto a piece of wax paper. I load my brush with water and dab that into the paint to build a thinner consistency. I use layers of color. If a layer feels too thick, I brush some away with water. When the first layer is dry, I use Tamiya Planel Liner paint to highlight the spaces between boards. I also use it in the deck gouges. Lastly I wash with Apple Barrel Pavement Black. This is the same Pavement Black I used for roads on the Exeter Branch from my last post. In the example below, the left most deck is painted with the base color. The other three have been weathered. The right most has the decks dry fitted onto the flatcar.
I'm pretty happy with the overall results. This is a pretty simple and quick method. Drying time is the only thing that slows the process down as I wait until one layer is dry before applying the next.
Lastly, a friend of my started making 3D printed pallets. I took a shot at painting some of them and am pretty happy with the results.
That's it for this update. My next post WILL include track being installed on the main level!
