Outdoor Track

I've mentioned that the outdoor layout will be set in early 1880s Leadville (front yard) and Salida (back yard). Currently my target date is 1882, but I've wavered a bit on that. I'll comment more on that (someday) in a post on the outdoor layout design, but for this post let's focus on the track.

I've mentioned before that most outdoor track is "gauge 1" but the track style varies depending on whether we are modeling narrow or standard gauge. Because I am modeling 3 foot narrow gauge, my official scale is Fn3 -- "F" (1:20.3 scale), "n" = narrow, 3 = 3 feet. There is a lot of track available for Fn3 modelers, including Llagas Creek and Sunset Valley (I'd link to Sunset Valley's site, but they are having apparent site problems right now.) There are other manufacturers, but those tend to be the most respected in terms of "authenticity" of appearance.

Alas, I have two problems with their track. First, is cost. Over $3/foot for a normal section of track from the former, over $5/foot for the latter. Ok, maybe I could live with that, given that I spent over $1k on the Aquascapes stuff for the pond. But the second problem is that their appearance matches NG (narrow gauge) track in the 1900s, which granted is the era most people model. But in the 1870s and early 1880s this was what the track looked like:



That's Palmer Lake not long after the Rio Grande RR first came through. Look at those ties -- not a nice rectangular one in the lot. Tie plates? Not even sure they were invented then. And given the HUGE drive to make NG track as low cost as possible to appease the northeast financiers, tie plates would have been avoided as an unnecessary luxury. And ballast? We don't need no stinking ballast!

The truth was the NG movement in the U.S. from 1870-1883 was based largely on a myth of cost savings, and those constructing the railways were determined to ring out the cost savings even it it meant sacrificing long-term high maintenance costs in exchange for short term construction costs.

By 1882 in Leadville things probably weren't so extreme, but alas I can't find any pictures of the track at that time. I can find some of Salida in 1880 (when the railroad first came to Salida and Leadville) and 1882 and it appears that in 1882 they were still using 7-foot wide NG ties, but they were somewhat more rectangular in shape. Of course new ties would have been swapped out for the original ones -- put straight into the dirt the original ties would have needed replacement very early.

By 1882 the Rio Grande was already coming to terms with the need to put standard gauge rails to any city where there was competition from other standard gauge lines. In 1880 they added a 3rd rail to the front range line, and by 1890 they would do the same to Leadville, in response to the arrival of the standard gauge Colorado Midland.

But having said that, in 1882 the Rio Grande would also have been counting on having to replace the ties several times before they needed to add standard gauge to Salida/Leadville, so I figure 7' ties are just about right. Also, when the railroad first came through ties were built from local wood. The local wood was quickly exhausted however (in Palmer Lake the foresters talk about the 1870s as a time when everything was clear cut, and the oldest trees today date from that decade), so ties had to be bought from external sources -- and usually those were more conforming to a rectangular shape than the ones that were hastily cut when the line was first laid.

So, for my track I want: 7-foot scale, very rough ties; light rail (to match the rail then used), and more of a sand-dirt roadbed than anything resembling ballast.

I am considering fashioning my ties from old bits of pressure-treated (p.t.) fir from the bridge project, with some kind of additional sealant to make them last longer. For rail, looking at the table of rail sizes (see third table from the bottom) and recognizing that early Rio Grande rail was 30 lbs, later to 40 lbs, I will probably go with the smallest rail I can find that can support standard flanges -- maybe code 205.

For the roadbed I am considering stained concrete, with sand put on to make it look like the dirt/sand roadbed at the time. I'm now working on marking out and leveling the subroadbed area for the first loop of track that I will lay. Once that is in place I can experiment with handlaying roadbed and track using these materials.

If that is successful I can start working on handlaying a stub switch (scroll to bottom of page) -- which was the cheaper form of switch that was common on NG railroads back then.

Diamond rail cutting

Ever since I completed the upper tier bridge structure I've had a "to-do" item of cutting the rails on both sides of the bridge in order to make it removable.

The challenge is that the rail gap must be wide enough to prevent electricity from passing across it, but narrow enough to allow the trains to pass smoothly across the gap. It is especially challenging in N scale to get a small enough gap because our wheels are so tiny. We can't use insulation to pad the bridge gaps, as we do the other rail gaps on the layout, because the bridge rails need to come up easily when the bridge is removed.

I tested a couple of thin-blade manual saws on some left over track and found them wanting: in part because it was hard to keep the saw from wandering off course and damaging the track surface; and in part because the back-and-forth saw motion created a lot of strain on the rest of the track.

Then I tested a rotary tool, commonly called by the name brand "Dremel", and it worked great. The only problem was that the resulting gap was too wide due to the width of the blade.

Today, while I was in Denver for other reasons, I dropped by Caboose Hobbies and found a thin Dremel diamond blade that looked to be perfect. It was $19 (yikes) but as no other solution is apparent, I bought it. After testing on a piece of scrap track I tried it on the track on the right side of the bridge:


The rail gap is so small in this picture that it is almost impossible to see. Look at the upper track, immediately to the right of the wooden bridge side. Below that track you can see the tools used -- the rotary tool with diamond blade, safety glasses (the blade really kicks up a lot of fine dust), and a simple box cutter I used to cut the plastic ties after the rail was cut.

The only problem was that after cutting it turned out that the track itself wasn't sufficently glued down on the right side of the cut. So, I added some glue (the white stuff at the bottom of the track in the photo) and used a pin to hold the track in place until dry.

Once dry I'll gently file the rail edges and test with a locomotive. If this works I will add the diamond blade to the track laying arsenal for special situations like this.