I painted the entire surface with some Behr Acrylic in a nice earth tan. This will keep the splintering down a bit, provide a neutral backdrop for scenery to come, and make it easier to see the Sharpie marks that will show where the tracks will go. I also made a little fixture that will position the edge of the Sharpie beyond the edge of the Ross ties that will mark the outside edge of the Flexibed roadbed. I bought a laser level to shoot straight lines. I had some straight runs on the previous layout that weren't all that straight.
This picture was taken with my tripod taped the flip-out tray on a 6 ft step ladder. I'm keeping this setup so I can take time lapse shots of the track laying process.
Right now I'm preparing track...lots of track! Some of the old track has adhesive and old foam roadbed on the back which I have to remove so the track lies nice and flat.
Here's what I'm talking about.
The old roadbed Vinylbed from Hobby Innovations. I used two different adhesives. In Germany I used a clear urethane adhesive which worked real well, but it a pain to remove once cured. In the US expansion, I used Liquid Nails. It's easier to remove since it's a bit more brittle. At first I tried removing it with a razor blade scraper. It worked, but was difficult to control. Then I used the special chisel I have for removing detail from plastic models. It worked better, but it's very slow.
Tonight I tried using the Dremel with the flexi-shaft handpiece with a coarse sanding drum on a slow speed. It worked great! I was able to clean a piece of 29" Ross straight track in about 1/3rd of the time.
What you see here is just track from the old layout. I've got a couple boxes of new track that gets added. I have a lot of pre-cut pieces from the previous iteration. I'm going to measure each piece and put a tag on it so I can quickly find cut pieces without having to chop up more good track. I had removed all the track pins when I packed the track so it wouldn't puncture holes in the packing boxes. I have to reinsert all of them. You can see the Dremel on its stand. Getting the flexi-shaft and the stand was a good decision. It makes handling the tool much lighter and more precise. I used a c-clamp on the base to ensure it doesn't tip over when I'm working.
Next session should finish up all the track cleaning and I'll be ready to start assembling a train layout. Right now I'm trying to decide on how to divide up the DCS power blocks. My past layout was cab control and had 30 separately controllable blocks. I'm not going that route this time. I think it will take two DCS TIUs fed from one Z-4000 and should be enough. At least I hope so...
