Building a railroad empire!

So,

Been a while since I got to work on my Model rail stuff, since the move, I had to disassemble my shelf layout, but I am still part of a Modular Model Railroad club. Since the move I have not been able to get back into working on anything, after 8 months though we are finally unpacked and now I have room to start working on stuff again.

So for the past two weekends, I have been going over to Roberts House to help him with constructing a corner for our club. We use a two piece curved corner and they are a challenge to assemble. 

Laminating wood to form the curved front. 

Since we have curved corners, you basically have to laminate this plywood to make the curved sections. It was a process and I like the look, but its a pain to build.  

Here is the two parts of the corner getting the end plates glued in.

And here is the corner up on its legs and clamped together.

So, about two years ago I purchased from my friend Rick, two 6' x 2' modules that he was not going to need anymore. Well once I picked them up. I noticed that the module frames were actually 5' 11.5" long and not a full 6'. Now the sub road bed he mounted was an actual 6' and over hung the frame. When I asked Rick about it, he could not remember why he had done that. Well I was slightly discouraged by this and just put the modules in my garage with plans to fix them.

Well the lack of club shows, didn't make me want to bust them out and work on them as I always had other stuff going on. Then the move happened and I brought these frames over to the new place, my wife and friend Darrin asking what I was doing moving these as I hadn't done anything with them. Well I would be getting to them, just had to get the garage completed.

Well the great news was after almost 8 months, the garage got finally unpacked and I could get to the modules that were buried in the back of the garage. So this past weekend I got them out and took them Down To Roberts place to do some work on them.

First up was getting the end plates on them which included lots of clamps and some hefty amounts of glue. 

Gluing on the end plates.

Once we got the end plates glued on, it was next to get some wood down on the deck, which by luck Robert had an extra thin plywood that we had bought the weekend before, he donated it for my modules as it was easier then taking it back to Home Depot. SO a few cuts later, we had decking for the frames, the only thing was Robert ran out of brads in his nail gun, so I have to glue the deck down at home.

We have tops now!

So sometime this week, I will get the tops glued and tacked down, then I can start to plan the track plan for these. As I told Robert yesterday, its good to be working on these and seeing progress makes me want to continue. So with any luck, I will have these two ready for the next train show we do.

TK