I'd planned to do a bit of modelling over the Easter break, but ended up in Canberra at the National Folk Festival with the family, plus a friend from Townsville and her daughter. Then in May I ended up in hospital for an emergency appendectomy, which went well, but I picked up a golden staph infection in my blood stream ... so was off work and away from sharp tools for three weeks. Once back on deck I was flat out trying to catch up, and then in July I was off to China for a few days for work, which ended up being eleven nights away!
And that was where I finally managed to do a bit more design work for Weddin Jct. Rather than trying to get modelling tools, adhesives etc through Chinese customs, I opted for some 3D work on the layout benchwork. I thought I had six sheets of 1500 x 900 x 19 yellow tongue flooring ply in the garage ... turns out there were only four sheets, but they were 1800 x 954 x 19. I can manage to rip these up with the circular saw into sufficient bits to make all the L girders, legs, horizontal braces, splice plates, and a few of the diagonal braces. This will mean I can just scavenge other odd bits for the rest of the diagonal braces & risers, and will probably only need to buy a few lengths of pine for the joists, plus some thinner ply for the sub-roadbed.
I had hoped to post all this while I was in China, but it seems the Peoples' Republic is not enamoured of BlogSpot.
Below are a couple of renders from AutoCAD Mechanical Desktop of the benchwork.
Here I have reduced the legs and put them under the joints in the girders.
Finally, I decided to use splice plates (in red) at the joints, and cantilever everything (except the narrow section at left, which is short enough to not require splicing or intermediate legs). This last view also shows the risers for the sub-roadbed. I will probably review these too, as it is likely I can get away with fewer in the flat areas of Cootamundra / Parkes staging along the rear. I'm yet to work out how to support the branch line terminus benchwork above the staging.
The problem now is the garage needs a major sort-out before any work can begin.
In the months since my last post, I also received the 3D print of the roof for the MRC. The limitations of white strong & flexible material are evident in the layering that shows up particularly in the large radius of the roof.
Above is the render from Shapeways. Below is the finished part.
That's it for now. Hopefully I'll get a bit of benchwork done in September / October, while the family is enjoying a trip to Europe! Cheers,
Lindsay
