Built By: Kent Smiley
Description: Widefield Corner
I was experimenting in Anyrail one day and thinking about how wide you could make a T-Trak corner. I saw some of the large radius, concrete tie, super-elevated corners and also how they also impacted how they would fit in our Club (NVNTRAK) layouts with our Jackson Junctions.
The 481 (19") and 718 (28") corner pieces looked like track crying out for a module, beyond just turnout accessories. I also thought if you could fit something in the Single-Corner(282-315)-Single space, it wouldn't effect the overall geometry of the layout. So after many attempts, the following Anyrail design came out. The basis is 6 x 481mm radius pieces for the inside and 2 x 781mm and 4 x 481mm radius corner pieces for the outside. I chose to cut 2 pieces of 124mm double track down to fit the difference between the outside and the module end. For the little piece on the inside, its a piece of Peco plastic ties although the rail is from the Kato double track. I'll shore it up with some cork roadbed which will be hidden once I ballast everything.
The baseboard is based on a 2 x 308 wide pieces plus the 365x365 for the standard corner. I didn't want some awkward L shaped module to cart around so cut it 45 degrees to the ends right where the corner pieces joined. They are mirror images of each other.
I proved the concept today so created a page for it. I wanted to see how 85-90ft autoracks and auto parts boxcars looked on T-Trak modules. I don't think they look too bad!
Here is the Anyrail drawing.
The two photos below are after the frames have been built from 3 x 1: pine around the edges of the MDF. Some foam board was cut and shaped and glued on. Ground color painted on and then ground foam sprinkled over to give the basis for the scenery.
I finally got around to adding trees to the corner.
Follow this link to a couple of pictures of the corner in action at our Fairfax Station Museum Show. (scroll to the bottom).