How did he handle the curves?   Did he make semi-diagonal cuts and cement the pieces together - or was the plastic soft enough to allow for some bending?

 The plastic was soft enough to allow for bending, both curves and grades.

I could see taking 1/1/4" PVC tubing and cutting it lengthwise in half...along its axis, inverting it, and screwing it to risers.  Then, roadbed placed on the upright cusps.  Curving would be natural and as good as splines, although I don't know how much you can bend a given PVC pipe cut in half. 

What I would worry about is noise....the tubing halves would be soundboxes under the roadbed.  It might be okay with cork, though...dunno.  But for all the time saved, I think splines or cookie cutter is fine.

-Crandell

Just to make it clear. The PVC pipe in the article was not cut at all. Just screwed to the riser. I don't know about the bending. I have the magazine somewhere. I think he wrote something about bending. I will see if I can find it. Is PVC pipes expensive compared to masonite splines?

you could use a heat gun to shape the pipe ?

Pvc pool pipe is cheap and more flexable! it could work.

I know of PVC pipe being used on Garden Railroads.  I've not heard of use indoors.

I have found the article.

Can someone please tell me if I am allowed to publish the whole article here with pictures and text? 

Benny:

The general rule is if the article is freely available somewhere on the web, you ask the author/creator for permission to post his/her content elsewhere, and offer to link back to their site from the new location.

If they say yes, then you're free to post it here. If they say no, then there's your answer - but posting a link to it is generally always okay.

Lifting content from elsewhere on the web and posting it here is only okay if you get permission first, or if you own the content yourself.

Having said all this, there is also the concept of "fair use". Fair use says that if you want to quote an author or use a sample image, or use a short video clip elsewhere in your own work to illustrate a point - that's okay and you don't need to get permission first. But the "fair use" piece you use needs to be a tiny part of your overall work. If the topic of your work is the same as the piece you use, then it's generally considered that you're plagerizing and that's not fair use.

In other words, if your post is about benchwork and you use some material from elsewhere about benchwork, then that's plagerism and not fair use. If your post is about benchwork and you use a quote from an article out of Time magazine in your post to make a point, then that's fair use.

Also, always reference the work you took the piece from, and provide a link back to it on the web. If it's a hardcopy publication, it's automatically under copyright so you can quote a few lines of text to make a point under fair use, but that's all - and you must always reference the work when you do. You can't scan photos in an offline publication and post them without permission.

Bottom line, when in doubt, always get permission first.

I first read about this method in Model Railroader, May 1988, page 88. The Author's name is M. J. Randall.

I had no layout at that time so I never tried it. I decided to try this method today to see if I like it or not. I will try to explain what I did.

I started with PVC pipe. My pipe is 16 mm in diameter because I could not find any smaller in my city, but the Author used 1/2 inch pipe (12,7 mm). I attacked 2 pipes like this. The distance between the pipes are 6 mm (I used a masonite piece) I did not take any photo of only the pipes but I'm sure you understand the first step.

It's very importent that you fasten the pipe at the bottom to get an even roadbed. Or else it can easely loose it's round shape. I cutted 45 mm long pieces of 6 mm thick masonite and glued it on top of the pipe with latex caulk.

This is what it looks like when the masonite pieces are glued.

Then I glued cork roadbed on top of the masonite pieces.

The result is a very smooth and strong roadbed. I tried to bend the 16 mm pipe to see what radius it can take. It's no problem to use a 32 inch radius. And I'm sure you can use smaller radius with the 1/2 inch pipe.

I think this method is very interesting. It was fast and easy to build. I already have another idea how to make this even better, but that's another story. Maybe I will write about that later...

But I can tell you right now that I will be using PVC pipe, masking tape and cement :-)

Thats a nifty way of doing it.. a nice alternative to spline. I wonder if something like that would be possible with N where you would need much smaller pipe?

Chris