Maybe it’s just the mild climate here, but I’ve never had any problem with sagging roadbed when I’ve used a glued-together sandwich of Homosote and plywood over 16” spacing between risers. Even when I’ve used ½” plywood it always felt plenty stable, even overkill.

So for light weight and ease of handling, I decided to risk being scolded by wiser and more experienced modelers and used ¼” plywood on this layout. I admit that I’m nervous about having to eat crow, but so far I’m not seeing a problem.

Well, for reasons too long to go into here, the multi-level layout I started a few years ago has to come down. It's a tough thing to say good-bye to something one has put so many long hours of work into. But, trying to keep things in proper perspective, no layout is forever. Sooner or later they all come down! And whether we want to admit it out loud as modelers or not, a layout is not the be all and end all of life! There's so much more to live for than a layout, no matter how great the layout might be.

Today in Harperlandia...

I'm sharing the newsletter I got from Sara Kelly about her new movie about model railroaders.

*** UPDATED 9-8-14 *** Scroll down to see additional work on the structure.

It doesn't look like much, but I'm making (slow) progress on the Palmer structure for my layout.  I've got the walls cut out and a few other details in the works.  It's a good thing I don't try to make a living doing this!

Jackfull gets a bonus point for resourcefulness.                

Did everyone else finish their homework? Any questions? Some of you got stuck? Does this help?

Some of you probably remember the Pythagorean Theorem: the sum of the squares of the legs on a right triangle equals the square of the hypotenuse. Which means:

I'm modeling the East Tennessee & Western North Carolina in On30 (yes, using Bachmann locomotives). Knowing I'd never be able to do true justice to the real railroad, I 'protolanced' a fictional branch line up Stoney Creek, which in real life is just East of Elizabethton, TN. My parents grew up there.

The layout takes place in 1943 (when both my parents were about 7 years old) and pretty much fills a small (11X10) room.

This installment covers construction:

I've posted some "in-progress" pictures of Randy Rieck's On3 C&S layout on the C&Sn3 :

http://coloradosouthern.blogspot.com/

Enjoy, Darel

The actual math behind the cubic spirals of railroad curves is not normally a part of the middle school curriculum and I have no intention of drilling kids into proficiency with them. On the contrary. But I do try to illuminate the mathematical aspects of their everyday experiences and help them see how those connect to fields like engineering, economics, music, or whatever.