JJ & C RailRoad
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Water Level's for grading your layout One of the first things I ran into when starting my layout was uneven ground. My layout is roughly 28 feet wide and 50 feet long. It also has a pond smack dab in the middle. The pond is in the shape of a big "Y" measuring 11 feet across and 13 feet long. Not the easiest layout to just eyeball it (I'm pretty anal about these things anyway). The best thing I could think of for grading was a water level. I have seen a couple of other people use it for their layouts and I have also used this technique in the service for much bigger projects. It worked out just right for me and came with a nice low price tag. What is a water level you ask? Simple, so simple most people would never think about it. First, think about how water acts when its in a glass. It's level across the surface right? Yes, no matter how much or how little you have, it will always level itself. Now take any length hose that is clear and hold up both ends in one hand so it's in the shape of a "U". Pour enough water into the hose until you almost fill it up to the ends. You now have a PERFECT leveling system, the water levels itself in the hose because you have the pressure of the atmosphere pushing down equally at both ends. You can check any point on your layout as long as your hose is long enough, you don't have any kinks in it and the ends are left open. The hose I used was the cheapest 50 footer we could find at the local Kmart. Of course it was "Garden Green" so I had to make some clear extensions for each end to allow me to see the water level. So, I bought a hose "end" repair kit. It had screw together ends for both the male and female end's of the hose. It cost less than a buck. I also found some 3/4 inch clear tubing around the house to use but you can buy it at a hardware center for pennies a foot. I used about a foot of clear tube for each extension and simply put each of the hose repair ends onto a clear section of tubing then screwed the new sections on the ends of my green hose. Pretty simple other than the fact that I was always alone when it was time to check ground grading so I used long wooden stakes stuck in the ground to hold the hose ends in place while I measured. Measuring was simple. Measure from the ground up to the water mark in the hose at each location and the difference between the two was how much difference I had between the two points on the layout. One of the most important things I did was to make a map of the layout and mark one point to always use as a reference. I called it my Zero marker. Every place I checked was compared to the Zero marker point to see if it was higher or lower and earth was either added or removed to make the ground level just right. I have 5 box's of Aristo Craft 5 foot rail out on the layout and in no place is the grading of the track more than 1/2 a percent. Enough of my babble for now, a picture is worth a thousand words (and may be easier to understand than me).
The above location's are about 50 feet apart but their ground level's are less than a half an inch of each other.
One thing I should also mention here is the fact that my roadbed is not conventional. On top of using this method to set grade like you would, I also used this same procedure to set the grade of my Roadbed system. I have post's set in the ground every 4 feet and my roadbed is made up of beams attached to the tops of the post's. I was able to set each beam at exact level's on the post's and then backfill area's to meet the roadbed where the earth grade didn't need to be perfect or set at any particular level. Sorry about quality of the pictures, I'm trying to cut down on server
space so the compression is hurting a little. |
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