Looking good Neil.
A couple of comments.
I assume you are going to cover the top of the bench work with soil or gravel, if so I found if you keep the bench side rails as high or higher than the top of the ties it will keep the ballast from drifting away from the track.
On the open benchwork I used no ladder roadbed just the bench work to support the track. 2 X 4 cross members about 12 inches on center. The whole structure became sort of a ladder roadbed.
Thanks Rick.
I’m kinda wondering if I’ve shot myself in the foot by dropping the benchwork by so much, it’s stopping exactly what you suggest…
It seemed a good idea at the time, but I might have bought a whole lot more work for myself. 
I just wish I could get cedar instead of crappy (but cheap) radiata pine.
Cheers
N
Edit - Oh, and yep on the front fascia. It might end up as full height rock panels yet. Just another one of my half baked fire, ready, aim ideas. 
Maybe on the curves if you can make saw cuts about 1/4 to1/2 way through the strips to help bend them without snapping, cut on the inside to relieve the stress of bending .
Or soak them with water to help them bend
That’s a really good idea Pete, hadn’t thought of that.
This next section is a trial for the rest of the layout - I’ll try that way for one of the tracks, and a spline for the other.
I’ve said it a few times, but (meaning I’ll keep banging on about it 
), the pine comes from the sawmill fresh from steam pressure treatment. If left alone it turns into a serious pretzel within a few days - there’s always a reject pile at the timber yard that no one will touch, we all go for the straight bits a few layers down.
If I can get it in place while still wet and screw it down there’s a reasonable chance it’ll hold shape.
Kiln dry straight wood is stupid expensive.
Cheers
N
That sux it is so expensive for you, and probably like here the amount of rejects is huge compared to decent flat boards
Side note, a lumber yard I used to deliver to for their outside storage had giant clamps on the units you could pull from , every day they clamped the wood down to help keep it from twisting.
Had some time this weekend, so I started on the mainline loop roadbed. One as a spline, the other following Pete’s suggestion above.
I laid the grade for the outside track by eye using a piece of conduit to give a smooth curve.
Roadbed supports were two uprights and a cross piece. I set the height using a riser and a level. Figuring that bit really hurt my head, the spacing was different between each support, and I had a grade transition from 0 to 1% for a 2m section near the beginning.
The new roadbed is 25 mm thick (read cheaper) vs 40 mm in the yard. I made an L block where it changes.
I started with the spline first, mainly because I had some 100mm stock on hand which was a bit too narrow for the solid roadbed. Target width is 120mm, the ties are 105 mm so there’s a little bit of room for ballast outside the track. 5 x 12 mm stringers, 4 x 15 mm spacers.
Lots of snapped stringers, till I got the hang of where best to locate the knots (inside of the curve!), and not to try and move them in a near gale. Plenty of screws, glue and levelling involved.
Cut roadbed was a lot faster (thanks Pete!). Knots still gave some trouble as the timber didn’t want to bend evenly. I used a 5m length, which was too long to handle once the relief cuts were in. No trouble installing it, but had to force it to bend a few times and the timber cracked – not sure if that’ll cause problems or not.
Let’s see how this performs over winter.
Cheers
N
Excellent spline work !!!
Thanks Rooster. I could almost say it was therapeutic, once I got the hang of it.
Almost… 
Cheers
N
are you sure, your structure is sturdy enough?
i mean, if an elefant should come and sit on it, it might sag an inch or two…
just thinking, what a hole all this wood must rip into your purse.
Ha ha, it’s not the elephant Korm, it’s mother nature that worries me more. That combined with my overbuild OCD, Ahh well.
There are a couple of raised bench layouts in our club, one is just starting to sag in a few spots (after 4 years), the other got pulled up at 10 + years - no sagging but the spline was starting to come apart. I’m copying the best of both, I hope.
A lot of the wood is second hand. All the posts are recovered, and I got gifted a complete deck a few years ago from a builder that needed to dump it. The price of course, was a few thousand nails to remove! Most of the joists are from that pile so overall it’s not as bad as it may seem.
Maybe the price of 4 or 5 second hand Bachmann box cars is my outlay for all that you see, so far.
Cheers
N
I guess fearing the Rooster is old hat these days but mother nature will always be mother nature and the Chinese are watching your build as well!
Proof positive that if you can afford to be patient there are ways to cut costs without compromising vision or safety! All of our mountains are recovered material, too.
Eric
Most of my rocks and ballast was removed from an illegal dumping area, which unfortunately has been leveled and is becoming a shopping center. One day I drove by thinking I need to get some more ballast gravel, and the next morning my pickup would not start, week later when I got it back there was dozers and scrapers leveling it all out!
Bang on the money Eric. A lot of the ‘delay’ I had getting started was collecting materials, then figuring out what I could and couldn’t build with what I had. Didn’t help that I blew most of my train budget on a live steamer last year. 
But my free pile still has a ways to go…
I hear ya Pete, similar thing happened to me.
Not much done this weekend, had plans to get the rest of the upper level posts in, then we got a -6 deg (C) frost Sunday morning and the premix froze solid overnight. It might make for a good winter pic in a few years.
Got going around midday, 4 more posts added.
The shorty post is where I want to put a tall trestle, so I dropped the frame height. Track should pass through this bit at waist height, with rock canyon walls to the left, and behind. More visions…
Cheers
N
OK, I just have to say that if I had the opportunity to tell my younger self that I would one day be sitting at a computer with a cup of coffee looking at a train layout in New Zealand, it would blow my mind!
However, I am easily boggled.
Hope you’re enjoying the show Lou. 
Cheers
N
A bit more elephant proof framing went up last weekend.
Only 2 more posts to get to the end of this section.
And a bit more track line set out. I added a new siding on the fly so my curved turnout idea has morphed into a curved crossover. Just because it’s harder y’ know… 
Need to get some roadbed in next weekend so I can get the crossover design underway. Building that is / was my winter mission. Fingers crossed.
Cheers
N
Neil, Good to see the framing notched into the posts, that will save you a lot of grief down the road.
Nice catch Rick !
I totally missed that…great work Neil !!!
