Completion of the Helix remodel

After all the demolition, I was able to sand the areas that needed it. I also came across some areas that I used screws in. They were fine before since the cork covered them, but now that I don't plan on using cork I need to grind down the heads. So I loaded a grinding stone in the Ol' dremel and away I went. I know I made a point of wearing saftey glasses, grinding particles can and will get everywhere. I deal with that in my job as a welder for Caterpillar Inc.

  After all of that was done, I used a tack cloth to clean all the dust and particles from the sub-roadbed so that the adhesive caulk would adhere better. This loctite caulk is pretty good, real easy to use and it grabs pretty quick.

 I made transitions from cork to make sure I was at the proper elevation. This was fairly easy with the use of a surfoam, sanding block and a powered detail sander. Out of all three,, the surfoam tool worked the best.

I remember last time, I soldered three sections of flex together for the helix. That was a pain, so this time I decided to solder two sections together. Before soldering, I cut one tie off each end of the flex track section. This worked great, because of the 20" radius that I was using did not require the rail to move that much.

 I made sure to pay attention to the smoothness of the soldered joint, any bumps would not be good. I had scrap steel laying around that I use for weights,, worked great.

 I made sure the rails were in line and also that the rail joiners were centered.

 Here you see the completed solder joint.

After I laid the first two piece section,, I measured to see how much rail is cut off on the ends to make joints line up. Worked out to be 14mm. So I fabricated the two piece flex track sections, cut the right amount off, applied the adhesive caulk and a track laying I did go!!!!

There are some sections that I needed to add more supports to. You can see here, there is no support for the joint area of the sub-roadbed. You can see the added support in the picture prior to this section of text.

     While laying the track,, I noticed that I did not have to solder the connections between the two piece sections. The adhesive caulk and new rail joiners did the trick,,nice flowing curved joints!! I am so relieved that helix works MUCH better. Before I had to watch it all the time, now I can run a train in there and not even worry about it.

     Well that is it for now, I plan on taking some videos of trains traversing the helix. That will be a little later. I work weekends,, so maybe Tuesday next week,, who knows.

  Thanks for looking, Have a great one, Greg