Into the Great Outdoors

The first foray for Baldwin Ten-Wheeler #77!




















The "roadbed" is a pressure treated 2x6 connected to the house at one end with one inch "L" brackets and floating over the handrail of the deck on a pair of eight inch carriage bolts. Using the carriage bolts allowed flawless adjustment of the board at dead level.




















The same technique will be used to support all the other trackwork around the deck and the portion of the track that will hang on the fence, meaning it should be easy to get ALL of it perfectly level for the whole area around the big oak tree. I like that the use of the same 2x6 construction from which the deck is built will help the railroad to feel integrated with the existing structures rather than merely perch atop them.




















Here's the inside view of the First Class train pulling out behind #77, what was often called the "milk run" on small railroads - the out-and-back trip to deliver passengers, mail and packages. Both this baggage car and this passenger car with the rear observation deck were bought for a pittance on ebay. They are both refugees from the widely available Bachmann "Big Hauler" sets that appear around Christmas time. In the black and white photos it is impossible to tell what color these cars really were, so I repainted these in this yellow and brown paint scheme that I invented as being the "house" scheme for my version of the TFRR.




















The whole indoor train yard is built to slide out to allow maintenance access to the washer and dryer underneath. That means that a gap in the track is also a necessity, meaning that the indoor board and the outdoor plank had to be as leveled and positioned as possible so that incoming and outgoing trains will cross the gap smoothly. To accomplish this I had to install a metal shim along the back edge of the ledger board that supports the plywood train board to overcome the effect of a slight bow that has formed over the last six months.




















This correction revealed that the bottom board in the little tunnel through the wall was significantly elevated (relatively speaking) as compared with either side. Rather than try to chisel or sand this down I removed the middle section of ties, leaving only a pair at the end to hold the end of the rail in place.




















Later on I will disguise the "free floating" track by modeling this hole through the wall to look like this spot is a crossing for a city street over the tracks. Specifically I guess I'll call it Chattahoochee Street, since that only requires a modest adjustment from the crossing in the yard on the prototype railroad, right in front of the TFRR's locomotive shop.













Here's a view of the exact same crossing on Chattahoochee Street in Cornelia today, where you can see that - amazingly - there is a dump truck repair shop (barn red metal building in the center of the photo) in almost the exact same spot as the TFRR's locomotive shop.















Here's a much closer view of Chattahoochee Street, where it is plain that only one track out of five remains. This view illustrates what I will try to achieve with the street crossing, where the street will seemingly extend into the wall. This will be a pretty good dodge if I can pull it off!




















The fact that even this one track remains 40 years later is a small miracle, as the rail is still laid only for a few hundred yards further north, then is reduced to naught but the grassy roadbeds so common to fans of the TFRR.