Cutting styrene

I finally started work on the platforms tonight. I decided on a width of 2" for the platforms, which works out perfectly to four strips per plastic sheet. I only wish they sold sheets in longer dimensions. They come in 21" lengths so I'll have to glue multiple strips together to get it long enough to span the table.

The first task was to pencil in the desired lines where I would cut the sheet. A fine pencil lead is preferred to achieve better precision since I would have to piece them together to form longer platforms. I want to minimize the amount of sanding at the edges, which will be required to ensure a consistent width between strips when they're glued together.

To cut the sheet, I first put the sheet on top of a cutting mat to prevent damage to the underlying work table. With the mat aligned to the edge of the table, I did the same with the plastic sheet. Then I took my straight edge and placed it on top of the plastic sheet with its straight edge aligned with one of the pencil lines. I clamped everything down so the straight edge wouldn't move around while I cut the sheet with the exacto knife. A heavy duty exacto knife is better suited for this. On the first strip, I ran the knife many times until it cut through the plastic sheet. However, it is better to score the plastic and then snap the plastic strips apart to get a cleaner edge. Since the sheet was 1.5" thick, I found scoring it halfway seemed to work best.

The platform

The temperature this week-end was too cold to do any wood work outside so the benchwork was put on hold. The forecast for next week-end is 11c, but that may change. There's a saying for Calgary, "If you don't like the weather, just wait an hour". Depending on the weather, I may have to postpone any work on the benchwork until the Spring. However, I really need to get something going this Winter so I went to the hobby store and picked up some styrene plastic for my platforms. There were two brand names for plastics - Evergreen and Plastistruct. Both are good, but Plastistruct requires using their own special adhesive. Evergreen had a pretty good variety of sizes and I was able to find strips 2mm thick and 11.1mm wide. I'll use these to establish a consistent height for the platforms. For the platform surface, I picked up 1.5mm thick sheets. I was hoping I could find 50mm wide sheets at that thickness, but no such luck so I will have to do some cutting. With the train sitting on the track and cork bed, I measured a height of 13mm required for the platform. This should be close enough.

Tools

My apologies for the lack of posts. Summer is not the time to spend indoors. But now that Autumn has arrived, the temperature is getting much cooler - a signal to start thinking about model trains. In fact, I just joined the Calgary Eurorail Express club this week-end. It's a small group dedicated to modeling European railroads in Calgary. I met with some of the members and they were giving me some helpful advice on benchwork. I've been mulling over how to construct my benchwork for my railway station layout. Due to the lack of permanent space to display my layout, I decided to go with something similar to the N-Trak modular approach. My layout is going to span four tables. Each table is 2' x 4' in dimension. When connected together the layout will span 16'. The modular design allows for easy storage. Right now, I'm focusing on the section that will contain the railway station. I figure I can build the platforms and arched rooftop this winter. But before I can do that, I have to construct my table so I purchased a couple of power tools this summer to make the job easier. The primary reason was helping with the odd construction project around the house. Not shown is the circular saw for cutting the plywood. I bought the router this week-end in order to create a rabbit joint so that the plywood would sit recessed into the 1" x 4" frame. I didn't want the edge of the plywood to be visible. I wanted to keep things looking clean.