Today's session, while very important, doesn't photograph so well. First let me say that the additional track arrived from Ross Custom Switches. Once the vinyl roadbed arrives we'll be able to start laying track.
I fastened the right rear high-line and spliced it to the existing piece.
Then I started preparing more risers... lots and lots of risers... using the old risers and some new stock. I have almost 60 of them now, but will probably need more. Here's the pile of joists without their risers from the old layouts. As I noted in last post, I will probably splice these together to make longer ones so I don't consume precious resources.
And here's the riser pile. When possible I'm using the torx screws instead of the old Phillips. Many of the old screws already are suffering from cam-out problems. I opened up all the screw holes in the riser piece to 11/64ths clearance for the #8 Spax torx head screws. While you don't even need a pilot hole for this brand of screw, I find that having a clearance hole on one piece makes drawing the parts tight much easier. If you don't use a clearance hole, and if the parts are not tightly clamped together, it is possible for the screw to be tight without the parts being drawn together. If you try to torque it tighter, you actually have to strip the threads out on the riser, which is hard to do and it may also strip the threads out of the joist.
Next session will be more interesting since I'll be actually mounting stuff on the railroad.
