Jim:
I used 3/4" plywood for my sub-roadbed. Half-inch warps too
easily. I laid the 4' x 8' sheets on my benchwork and cut out sec-
tions of the butcher paper, positioned them on the plywood, and
punched holes through the paper and into the plywood along
the track center lines with an awl. When I removed the butcher
paper, all I had to do was connect the holes with a pencil and that
showed me exactly where to lay my tracks. I simply cut the right-
of-way out of the plywood with a jigsaw and fastened it to my
benchwork. I began laying track in 1981.
Gustav:
With such an extensive layout, how did you decide
where to start?
6: GN RS1 with an
eastbound freight
arriving in Eaton.
6
7: Looks like lunch break at the Ruston Fuel Depot
while a double headed eastbound freight crosses the
Moose River Bridge and a “Woody” waits for a pair of
F units to clear the crossing.
7
Jim:
Easy. You have to have a place to park your trains so I began
with the four-track hidden staging yard at the north side of the
room. They say mistakes are simply lessons to be learned and lots
of mistakes are called "experience." Well, I've had my share of les-
sons and experience. I learned one of my first lessons soon after
I had finished laying the staging yard that first winter. The tracks
were all neat and straight and I hadn't yet covered the yard with
the upper level.
However, the following summer I found all four tracks had
warped; they looked like snakes crawling over my layout. Yikes!
I hadn't worked with flex track before and didn't know to leave
expansion gaps in the rails.
Jim Ferguson’s GN - 5
MRH-Oct 2013
