Filling in the gaps

 

Modeling the AT&SF - D&RGW Joint Line through Colorado Springs from Milepost 70 to Milepost 80 circa 1978-1979

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Post 23: Filling in the gaps        (Edited May 9)

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A bit of travel and then a bad late winter-early spring cold kept me from working on the layout at all for a few weeks, and of course then I had to overcome inertia and rebuild my momentum. I'm finally back up to speed and have been working intently on filling in the last remaining gaps in the benchwork.

This post will cover finishing connecting Springs Yard down grade past the Santa Fe yard to link up with Kelker/Drennan. The mainline roadbed was in through here, but not the benchwork to support it. It turned out to be a much more complicated task than I had anticipated.

Here's the view into the corner showing the scope of my last week and a half of work. At the left edge is the subway for Costilla Street/Nevada Avenue, at right is the gap for Shooks Run/Spring Creek. The baseboard for the Transit Mix batch plant is new, as is the benchwork along the front edge to support the mainline.

When I built the baseboard in the corner for the Santa Fe yard I knew that the mainline would be lower and curve across in front of the yard. I figured I could simply graft the support framework for the main onto the yard baseboard. Well, that turned out to be far easier said than done.

First, the Santa Fe yard was already a pretty deep scene, and adding the mainline in front of it would only make it deeper. Second, since the edge of the layout would be a large, continuous curve here, the framing would be more complex, plus I was building out to an unknown edge in space. So the first order of business was to put up a temporary hard board fascia to build out to.

That done, I set to work slowly and methodically marking lengths and angles, then setting up the saw, cutting board by board to fit. That meant lots of trips upstairs to the shop in the garage and back down to test fit each piece before screwing it in place. Rinse and repeat as many times as necessary.

Here's the result. Did I mention that adding the mainline along the front edge of the yard would make the benchwork deeper? Like a lot deeper.

The yard throat turnouts at the left will be within reach, but those tying into the tail track back behind the Santa Fe Geep will be way beyond reach, never mind the customer spurs back in the corner. 

Now, I regularly operate on a layout with a yard that is up to 8 feet wide in places, so I know it can be done as long as you make your trackwork, trucks, wheelsets and couplers absolutely bullet proof, but even then sooner or later you are going to have to reach into the deepest spot to rerail a car, or replace a turnout, or whatever—trust me, it's gonna happen, so you'd better be ready for it. 

So what to do?

 

 

You do what lots of other model railroaders have done, you build in an access hatch. I already had one practically ready-made in the form of the baseboard for the concrete batch plant, but there was a wrinkle. The spur serving the plant had to run onto that baseboard, and at an acute angle to boot. There was no way I wanted to deal with a gap in the spur that would have to align perfectly without fail every single time the hatch was removed and replaced. Plus the rails would come to sharp points at the gap and would be sure to catch on something sooner or later and deform, rip out, or hurt someone (meaning me).

 

 

The solution was to sever off a wedge shaped slice of the baseboard right up to the edge of the spur track and permanently affix it and the spur to the benchwork framework. This will place the hatch joint right along the very end of the ties where I figure it will be least noticeable.

 

The batch plant structures will of course have to be built for easy removal, so whenever the need for access arises in future they will be cleared off, and a couple bracket screws removed from below, leaving the hatch free to lift up, also from below. That means there will have to be a second person present to hand it off too. Anyway, that's the plan. So far so good, we'll see how well it works once scenery is in place.

By the way, that white tube down at the bottom of the frame is a sewer main trunk pipe bridging across Spring Creek to reach the treatment plant on the other side.

 

That brings layout progress up to date, leaving only one more gap in the benchwork to fill between the south end of Kelker/Drennan and the swing gate, which should be much more straight forward, but you know how sideways things can go when you get overconfident, so stay tuned. With any luck the Golden Screw moment could be very soon now.

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Postscript Addendum        (Added May 9)

Northbound Santa Fe train 314 is rolling off the Sand Creek bridge and is about to enter Kelker on the Joint Line main. Meanwhile, the Rio Grande local's GP9 is using the Army's Fort Carson line for head room as it doubles over a cut of DODX flats to haul back to Springs Yard.

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As I had anticipated, building the benchwork for the transition between the south end of Kelker and the swing gate proved to be straight forward with no snafus. This last section supports the Joint Line mainline at the back, with the Army's line to Fort Carson in the foreground. 

This arrangement is very much a compromise as in reality the Ft. Carson line curves sharply to run southwest while the Main continues southeast, so the two do not run parallel here. And the Ft Carson line certainly doesn't tie back into the Main, but it has to on the layout to get across the swing gate to reach the staging yard. I'll add a berm and vegetation between the two tracks to make their proximity a little less obvious. I also had to compromise on track radius here, dropping down from 42 to 36 inches to get everything to fit. Such is life in the real world.

It may not be the Golden Screw moment quite yet as I still have to build a temporary bridge atop the swing gate, but mainline benchwork is now complete all the way around the layout room, not counting the peninsulas for the Russina Spur and Drake Station, and a bump-out for the wye in Springs Yard.

It also finishes off any excuses I have for getting started on laying track, so stay tuned.

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