Finally - the tramway has a road surface

I've finally completed (most of) the roadway on which the tram now runs. I have had to very tightly fit my home-made cobblestone paper to the tracks. You may recall that I had built up the roadway around the tracks using cork strips. I've now covered those with carefully cut paper.

The main issue was cutting to fit the curves. There's no way this can be done easily by hand. What to do?

Well, modern technology (and Franc Carter) to the rescue. I asked Franc to laser cut some guides to cut out the road surface curves. He kindly cut them to my spec out of MDF and I've used them to cut out curved sections from the cobblestone paper.

I reckon it looks excellent. Better than commercial tramway stuff! It fits really well and I reckon eooks pretty good even up close.

Photos of the tram

I've added a few photos of the tram in front of some buildings just to show how the bprinted cobblestone paper looks with the tram on it and some buildings in the background.

I reckon it looks super!

Tight Curves

I thought I ought to test how tight a curve I could make for a tram track. It turns out that I can easily get a 4 wheeler to run on a 5" curve. Anything smaller and the friction on the wheels causes reliability issues.

I tried 6", 5.5" and 4". It easily runs on 5.5".

Here's a video:

I've started using foam core heavily  for my test work and will probably be using this on the layout when prototyping the system. Final work will be done using cuts in the plywood base with timber supports, but maybe I'll just keep the foam core in place!

It's certainly stronger and lighter than cardboard, easier to cut and shape etc so will most certainly be used for the basis of landscaping.

I think that the track itself is about 4mm from base to rail top. I will be using an underlay under most of the track - most likely cork - but the tram will probably be different. The underlay is to absorb noise and form a good basis for ballast. With the tram tracks, I may use something like rubber matting used for lining kitchen drawers - it's a non-skid thing used to keep plates from banging about when drawers open. It's thin, absorbs vibration and is cheap.

I guess that means a 5mm foam core can be used for the road-base to line up with the rails? Anyway, that's getting a bit ahead of things.