Wall Framed Layout

[Tuga]

Kvp

 

So if I get a wood board with a width between 15cm - 18cm I should be OK. Thanks.

 

 

 

Jeff

 

When I saw the piers I knew that those were the weakest link in the project.

I agree with you that gluing the piers to the top of the layout board is not enough and will lead to breaks. 

My intention is that the track layout, after the tests and problem free will became permanent.

So after long hours of though and once I already have the piers, I decided to still try to use them  adding a 2mm threaded rod to each of the piers legs (maybe 2 in a cross might be enough).

 

 

The idea is to drill the top of piers to pass through the rod and use a nut + washer to keep it in place. In the inside use epoxy to glue the rod to pier, creating a fusion between them. Drill the layout baseboard to pass through the other end of the rod and tighten it up using a nut + washer.

 

What do you think? 

 

What is the behaviour of the connection between the piers and the viaduct in your opinion?

Do I have to reinforce that connection or even fuse it? 

 

Cheers

 

Edited February 28, 2018 by tavora

[kvp]

1 hour ago, tavora said:

What is the behaviour of the connection between the piers and the viaduct in your opinion?

Do I have to reinforce that connection or even fuse it? 

Besides the viaducts i have, i only tested the single station plate IST left in the club, but Imho both are very loosely connected, mainly to allow some misalignement and to connect ramps. Personally i would glue them together with some easy to remove glue, like hotglue. Btw. imho the threaded rods are a great idea!

Edited February 28, 2018 by kvp

[Tuga]

mmm I suspected that too.

One more thing to be tested when I start to put it all together. I will keep the hot glue suggestion in mind mate .

 

"Btw. imho the threaded rods are a great idea!"

Yes I think the threaded rods is the way forward.

Personal projects aside I think we are all here to share and find solutions that might be useful for everyone in the future.

 

[cteno4]

Good solution! Yes that will be a super positive lock of the pier to the layout base. You might see if there is a machine screw that works and just do a v inset at the top for the head. Would save cutting and cleaning the end of the threaded stock. I Doubt there is enough of a gap at the top between the pier and the viaduct for a washer and nut.

 

you may be be fine just epoxying the threaded stock up into the leg. Test one with that corner it should bond in there so well it will never come out! Might look at bolts or machine screws and hack off the heads as may be a lot cheaper than threaded stock (many times expensive here and you don’t have to clean your ends). But I don’t know if you can get longer m2 bolts or screws!

 

the s joiner connection to the viaduct and the plates is loose though. It may cause some torque on all the joints when vertical and stresses sideways at different angles. For the station I would look at maybe just building this out of wood and screwed to the layout instead of the places. The plates can get expensive fast to make a wider station. Also your track thru the station needs to get attached to the plates as well and more odd stresses there most likely. You can buy the station buildings separate if you want. They can also get cut in half to use both sides on one side or on either side of a wider station as you can’t see more than 1” into hem anyway. Walls can also be made pretty easily (you can print on acetate or use pin tape to make the big windows of usual station).

 

you could also look at using a small machine screw thru the viaduct track at each end that goes thru the pier top and washer and bolt underneath. Just counter sink in the v machine screw head into the viaduct center (lost of internal structure there for this). 

 

im fully in the ply under base now on our third club layout. The modules that used it in our last layout took a lot of abuse and held up really well, whereas the ones with s joiners and glued piers tore up in the first year. New layout is all this way. Just going to get started on that bit this weekend I hope.

 

i guess you could do up some peirs and attach them to a board and attach some viaduct and see how it will hold vertically. But it may take doing the whole loop and station to see how the whole thing will hold up. That’s the rub in an odder situation like this.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[inobu]

On 1/29/2018 at 6:23 AM, tavora said:

The track layout started like this 

 

 

and progress to something like this

 

 

if you look close the yellow track is actually elevated track, that's a big hurdle for a wall folded up layout. 

The viaduct piers need a secure base to attach to. Give it a wood base that you can attach to the frame.

The bolts will tie into the wood outline of the viaduct minimizing weight but adding support only where its needed. 

 

 

Inobu

   

 

Edited February 28, 2018 by inobu

[Tuga]

You were right Jeff, I just found a M2 bolt, washer and nut, tried it out and there isn’t enough gap in the pier for the washer only just for the nut.

I found a supplier for the full threaded M2 steel rod/studs. From the search that I’ve made the M2 bolts long enough for this project are harder to find and more expensive than the rods.

 

So with the piers locked this way I shouldn’t expect the 3 s-joiners on the piers to be strong enough to hold the viaduct firmly in place.

 

Station/track vs Plates

The track, plates and the station are going to be bolted between themselves. 

Then the hole station bolted to the baseboard.

 

Plates vs Piers and Piers vs Viaduct

Probably each pier will have to be bolted to the plate to lock it firmly (like Jeff suggested). I will try to avoid counter sink once like you say it weakens the internal structure.

 

I still have a long way to go till I get to testing part of it. 

 

I hope you have better weather to start the club new layout Jeff, here everything came to a stop in the UK with this so called “Best From The East” (snow and very low temperatures) and the “Storm Emma” (high winds and rain). I will look forward to hear about your progress.

 

 

That’s a good idea inobu I presume that you are guessing that I’m going to use foam as baseboard. Correct me if I’m wrong.

I still think ply is better for my project. More weight but that’s the compromise.

[cteno4]

Tavora,

 

i think you could probably just epoxy in about 1/2” -  3/4” up the pier leg with a longer bolt and nip off the head, but cost can be odd on bolts like that when you get to the odder sizes. I always hate clearing and cleaning thread ends and you are going to have a lot to do there! 

 

I think the s joiners will hold, it’s jsut they have some play laterally and I worry how those changes when vertical will effect the whole viaduct loop.

 

again I would suggest looking at just simple wood column piers and a thin ply base under the viaduct. It solves so many issues and it’s pretty simple to make. Cut the ply with a small hand jig saw and sand. Doesn’t have to be perfect as you only see the edge of it up under the viaduct if you get really low on view. Just looks like some of the supporting structure, paint it the same gray as the viaduct. It’s jut way easier to attach to your layout base and the viaduct to it very solidly. Station is going to be a big monster of pieces to try and fix down.

 

experiment some and see what may work best for you on this. It’s not the usual situation so a lot of guess work here by us all of how it will behave so experimenting is in order. I just keep pitching the ply viaduct under base as I have done that one and I know it will work in the vertical case.

 

luckily we are up in the 40-50s here so not bad working in the shop but house generator is down right now and we are going to get 60mph winds Friday which means trees down (we live in a small forested area with lots of big trees) which means Murphy will make us loose power with generator down. Tech is to be out Friday to repair it we shall see! Having a generator is Murphy insurance for sure! 

 

Hope you are not frozen! Does any one have snow shovels? 

 

cheers

 

jeff

Edited March 1, 2018 by cteno4

[kvp]

25 minutes ago, tavora said:

I still think ply is better for my project.

I would second that, it's easier to bolt and screw stuff to it and it's much thinner for the same strength, which is important if the overall thickness of the layout is important.

[Tuga]

20 hours ago, cteno4 said:

I think the s joiners will hold, it’s jsut they have some play laterally and I worry how those changes when vertical will effect the whole viaduct loop.

 

Ok I see what you mean. There is a gap between the pier and the viaduct (at both ends).

 

On 28/02/2018 at 5:56 PM, cteno4 said:

... you could also look at using a small machine screw thru the viaduct track at each end that goes thru the pier top and washer and bolt underneath. Just counter sink in the v machine screw head into the viaduct center (lost of internal structure there for this). 

 

 

I though in using the thin ply to do a rectangular part that will sit on the top of the pier to fill all the that gap. At the same time using the existing holes in the viaduct (under the track) put 2 small bolts on each side from the viaduct though the ply and screwing it under the pier locking up all the parts through the viaduct.

 

20 hours ago, cteno4 said:

... again I would suggest looking at just simple wood column piers and a thin ply base under the viaduct. It solves so many issues and it’s pretty simple to make. Cut the ply with a small hand jig saw and sand. Doesn’t have to be perfect as you only see the edge of it up under the viaduct if you get really low on view. Just looks like some of the supporting structure, paint it the same gray as the viaduct. It’s jut way easier to attach to your layout base and the viaduct to it very solidly. Station is going to be a big monster of pieces to try and fix down.

 

Do you mean ply under through all the viaduct? And not using the original Kato piers?

 

The weather is going crazy everywhere in the world 

Snow shovels?  

We have the army helping us. 

[cteno4]

Yep the idea is to make a plywood base under all the viaduct track that is just a tad thinner than the bottom of the double viaduct out of thin ply. This is screwy down onto wood peirs made to look like the style you want. For the firs go at our new club layout I’m just doing rectangular blocks about 3/4” x 2” with slightly curved edges like many of the modern viaduct use. Boring but sturdy. We can go back later and use other styles if we want, even beef up the latace kato piers if we want in places.

 

It having that solid ply base all the way to attach thr double viaduct to and the ply being very firmly attached to the layout base that was important to make the double viaduct hold up well getting attached and derached at each setup.

 

For a friends layout I made him piers like this that were like tihe kato Y shaped cassons (he had a temp layout with many levels an needed variable heigh ones) and he just cut them to length. I just cut the shape out on the band saw then ran the router around it to get nice curved edges. I didn’t do the fancy base, he just glued them to small base strips of thin wood I made him that were about 5mm larger foot print like a foundation in the ground and drilled a few small holes around the edge to drive pins into his foam layout base to secure them from slipping around (he remodeled his layout every few months!). He ended up with a whole set of pier lengths.

 

Some small cardboard shims between the viaduct and the pier may help take out some of that play in the S joiner and stop any lateral movement and stress on the whole viaduct track chain. It may be with all the piers fixed the whole thing holds itself in place. Putting the m2 machine screw thru the viaduct and pier top with a bolt under the pier top should also lock it in well to the pier and stop any movement. Again probably good in this case to have shims between the pier and viaduct to sop up that gap and provide a solid section all the way thru for the bolt to squeeze it all together tightly w.o stress. I think this all would work if the piers well bolted down and the viaduct bolted to the pier tops. It was having it hang sideways by the s joiners I think would not work.

 

given you don’t have a lot of power tools at hand the bolting system may be the best route for you. It should hold itself together and uses standard parts, just have to make your pier bolts and glue them in. The more I think about it it’s probably the best solution for you. It’s one of those things that it should work, but since you are putting this at 90 degrees off the way it’s usually used not completely certain...

 

you can make a little jig to drill the hole thru the viaduct at the same point on each end. Use a counter sink bit to make a v for the screw head to countersink into. Might be able to drill all the pier tops the same, don’t know how much the curved and straight sections will change the bolt path into the pier top, but experiment. Hole in the pier top could be a bit larger to sop up this variance as with a washer before the nut it can sinche down enough that the hole alignment does not have to be perfect and the pressure holds it in place not the hole. In fact you may want to have the pier top hole and the holes in the layout top for the pier leg bolts be a bit big to give your some wiggle room to get thing aligned up just right. In theory I’m thinking you could glue all your pier leg bolts in place (do it so the bolts are all the same length stick out of the legs, jig may help here), then once glued set the whole thing up with track and piers bolted together and standing on the bolts. Move it in place on the layout and getlined up and then mark all your leg bolt holes on the layout top. It’s a lot to try to get all aligned up so you will need to have a bit extra in the layout top holes for wiggle room. My only worry with all this is any movement/shape change in your layout frame/top when you go from horizontal/vertical will be put into your whole viaduct setup as it will deform with any layout base deformation. This is what the ply under viaduct gets around as it locks into the base and even strengthens it some like a truss system.

 

clear as mud?

 

jeff

[Tuga]

Got it mate, thanks. 

[defor]

Relevant to this topic possibly:

 

[Tuga]

Been a while since I posted anything in this thread.😶

Yesterday I was able to try my kato track layout in the kitchen floor 🤗. Still missing the inside oval track and yard in the middle, but my intention was to confirm the measurements (width and length) for the plywood base board.

Getting there slowly. 🙄

 

 

[cteno4]

And of course run a train! Glad it’s moving along!

 

Give yourself any little bit of extra room you can within your wall space and materials as I may come in handy down the road.

 

cheers

 

jef

[Tuga]

Yes I did run the new Virgin Pendolino , unfortunately I didn't had time to take proper photos so they are out of focus.😡

 

I wanted to check if all the track pieces would fit nicely or not. I was quite surprised that all the track fits like a glove and without strange angles (no rail gaps).

Yes after measuring the track layout I did leave extra room, Jef. I thought it was necessary in case of derailment and like you say "It may come in handy down the road" 😉

 

Edited June 17, 2018 by tavora

[cteno4]

It’s kind of murphy’s Law of layouts! 

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[Tuga]

Good news  - Just received all the track I need to finish my layout. 😀

Now the bad news - Had a water pipe leaking in my living room ceiling 🙁, which means all the ceiling come down. 😡 

So for now the wall frame layout is on hold 🤬. My priority is to fix the ceiling with new plasterboard, wait for it to fully dry and then decorate all the room. God knows how long this will take.😱

Edited June 25, 2018 by tavora

[cteno4]

Ugh! Sorry to hear about that, always a nightmare. Houses are such a constant battle on that stuff...

 

good luck getting all fixed and back to pretty and the layout back on track. Hopefully you can do some floor playing now and then with the track to test out everything before diving into the layout.

 

jeff

[Tuga]

I had hoped that all the ceiling nightmare would be over by now, that I could move on with the layout project but things never go the way we want...

The ceiling is repaired but in the process of doing it I got more damage done to the property by the working men. Got one thrown out of the house for being rude and his partner decided to vindictive him by damaging other two room ceilings when taking out the water damage ceiling in the living room. Not yet happy the plaster guy decided to use my sofa as scaffolding so he just put a wooden plank on the sofa arms and finish his job.

Then they expected me to claim the damages from my insurance, so I'm still trying to get their insurance company to pay for the workers damages.  

As you can see my last post in this thread was 25th of June 2018 and things are still not solved.

 

During this time I  tried to find someone willing take forward my project. Called some experts in layout making (firms/shops) but it seems no one wants to make some bucks. The usual excuses "we don't deliver that far", "to many miles", "you will have to find a courier", for god sake I'm the one paying!!!  What is wrong with this people?

 

Oh well I guess I'll have to find some motivation and time to do it myself. 😏

 

 

 

 

 

[gavino200]

8 hours ago, tavora said:

I had hoped that all the ceiling nightmare would be over by now, that I could move on with the layout project but things never go the way we want...

The ceiling is repaired but in the process of doing it I got more damage done to the property by the working men. Got one thrown out of the house for being rude and his partner decided to vindictive him by damaging other two room ceilings when taking out the water damage ceiling in the living room. Not yet happy the plaster guy decided to use my sofa as scaffolding so he just put a wooden plank on the sofa arms and finish his job.

 

That sounds horrible. What a bunch of goons. I wouldn't pay a dime until they sort it out. 

 

 

Edited January 3, 2019 by gavino200

[cteno4]

Ugh, that’s awful! Sadly that happens a lot. 

 

Sorry the shops are not interested, seems like part of their biz would be shipping layouts. Your size is pretty easy to crate and truck. The only coustom shop here I know in Baltimore ends up shipping large layouts world wide! One of our club members used them and they just rented a truck to or the 100 mile delivery. They did it a second time when he moved another 100 miles and disassembled, transported and reassembled the layout! They were happy for the business! They later delivered an extension out to him and installed.

 

maybe look for a local wood worke for hirer? Most of the construction work is basic woodworking. If you find a reliable person it should be pretty easy and done locally. Good carpenters/woodworkers can also get good at keeping things strong but light weight if asked. Sometimes they are very reasonably priced as well as little overhead if it’s just them. I had a cabinet guy out in california that was cheap and spectacular. He could make odd cabinets like half the time it would take me but really nice and great price so I didn’t mind not doing them myself!

 

stay at it! Any hope of just setting some stuff up on folding tables to play with stuff now and then?

 

jeff

[JR 500系]

That sounds bad.. hang in there buddy! I'm sure it will work out fine in the end!

[Tuga]

23 hours ago, gavino200 said:

 

That sounds horrible. What a bunch of goons. I wouldn't pay a dime until they sort it out. 

 

 

Is not that simple. They did sort it out (at their own pace), still left me with all the crap and dust to clean, which I refuse to do. Their insurance company now have to pay me for the expenses of hire a cleaning firm and the damage to the sofa, which I had to proof to them with photos . Thank god, I took photos that day "caught in the act".

 

16 hours ago, cteno4 said:

The only custom shop here I know in Baltimore ends up shipping large layouts world wide! 

 

maybe look for a local wood worker for hirer? 

 

stay at it! Any hope of just setting some stuff up on folding tables to play with stuff now and then?

 

jeff

 

I would order my baseboard layout from anywhere in the world (specially if referred by you or anyone in this forum), however the problem there is import duties which will make cost prohibitive. 

 

Already thought about  hiring a local wood worker like you suggest Jeff, but with all the miss repair adventure I'm quite afraid of finding someone to do it and end up with another goon (like gavino stated).

 

At this moment I just wanted to have the baseboard to be able to do small things everyday, to take my mind off all the worries and problems. The repairs are just the tip of the iceberg, dealing at the same time with my fathers brain/lung tumor + rehabilitation is far worst and overwhelming. 

 

This is the reason why I haven't been active in the forum. Did read daily the posts but not participate. I've been somehow as in hibernation like the bears. So...time to get out of my sad dark hole and come out to play.

 

2 hours ago, JR 500系 said:

That sounds bad.. hang in there buddy! I'm sure it will work out fine in the end!

 

Yes I know. Thanks.

 

 

  

[cteno4]

Trevor,

 

sorry wasn’t suggesting using the Baltimore company for you as like you say duties and shipping would be hideous! Sorry none of the shops there have it together. I guess they get enough local business to care, sad.

 

ive learned to be so careful with the contractors we use here. I use to do almost all of it myself but as I get older I farm more out, but it’s easy to get stung like that unfortunately. Luckily for a lot of the major stuff I have a small company of two brothers and two helpers and they do things at a very good quality and price and can trust them that they don’t take shortcuts and leave messes, but they have a long list to get on these days as too popular because of this!

 

might keep slowly asking around about a carpenter. This could actually be a cabinet maker as it’s really the same construction. I’ve found once you find someone that has a few good references about getting it right and treating the customer well they are good and you feel that when you first talk to them. They would construct the whole thing in their shop and then just install so hopefully lots less chance of mess and problems and it’s short so you could over see it. The wood work is not hard at all for a pro it’s just getting it engineered for proper support in both positions and then the hinges and lifting and latching mechs, but again a good custom cabinet maker usually has to noodle on these sorts of odd things a lot. Wish you were in this area as would love to help you creat this, interesting challenge!

 

Very sorry to hear about your dad. I know the caregiving being overwhelming with my wife, mom and elderly friends here. It does take a huge toll on you so make sure to keep watch on it and take care of yourself. Take some time to play where you can even if it’s on a fold up table for an evening with some trains or building a few structures (I find that very relaxing, especially the sankei kits).

 

hang in there and don’t worry about hibernating, we will still be around when the bear pokes his nose out! No rush! 

 

Jeff

[gavino200]

8 hours ago, tavora said:

 

Already thought about  hiring a local wood worker like you suggest Jeff, but with all the miss repair adventure I'm quite afraid of finding someone to do it and end up with another goon (like gavino stated).

  

 

Tavora, I tend to hire out for larger woodwork jobs. I had a hard time finding people locally when I search among "carpenters". Lots of guys grousing about how it wasn't worth the time, or grossly overcharging, etc. But when I switched to calling "cabinet makers" I found lots of places that were super keen to help, and if anything they regularly undercharge me. Jut a thought.