Roadbed, Part II

In our previous installment, I shared that I am using cork underlayment as roadbed material.

To cut, I suggest a straight edge, a sharp utility knife and a cutting board.

I'm using 1/4" plywood.

Initial setup

Started the timer via a phone app linked to the Nikon...

I changed my methodology slightly from this shot - I've gone to cutting from the far side of my straight edge so I don't have to try and work around the clamps.

I decided to cut everything at a 90 degree angle to speed and simplify the process. I might eventually make a cutting shoe to give me a 45 or 30 degree angle, but that might be for a portion of a railroad used for rolling stock glamour shots - that's probably well into the future..

Production give me the following stock:

4" wide for double track or crossovers
1 7/8" wide for single track
 (Doing that gives me a chance to show a small valley between parallel tracks)
15/16" strip for single track around curves

Here's the end result of my first slicing session.

More photos are in the gallery on richmond-terminal.org.