30mins a day pays off even if that’s at the end of a work day that started at 8am and finished at 11:15pm. Its all part of the fun of model railroading to go and wind down from the daily grind for 30 mins after work. Its not as healthy as a exercise but better than a pint down the pub, remember them?

Anyway on to business, Ackerville is a large section of my layout about 17ft before it curves at the southern end. I need to get this first section finished for my scenery AP certificate so I am focusing on getting that to a completed state first, then moving onto the rest of the layout.

If you have been following the blog you’ll know alot has been done already but I left the roadbed at the Southern end while I worked out how to tackle the CN main line curve.

I want 18in radius curves as a minimum where I can get away with them. Modern stock and locomotives don’t look or perform well on anything less.

There is a turnout in this section so the mainline (left) roadbed went in first followed by the diverging (right) route.

This picture and unfortunately the glue went down before I realised I need to slew the roadbes towards the rear of the baseboard to get the curve in. Ah well lesson learnt.

The next thing was the corner. I am using woodland scenics roadbed which has a score line along it that you cut to bed round corners thats the next thing I did on two 24″ lengths for the lower corner.

You can see the gap and double row of pins in these pictures in contrast to the upper curve which is slightly greater than 18″

18 inches is an OK radius but I am still going to super elevate the track on these corners it’d going to be tough to run longer stock through them otherwise.

Well its Friday, have a great weekend. I’ll be doing what I can to create more content for you but its the NMRA Winter Board meeting and that will take up alot of my time.

Gordy