There I was, cranking along. Lower level road bed in, track going down - what progress! I had a box car on the track to roll along and make sure everything was smooth, as the track was being nailed down. Suddenly, I looked down....... Wow, that car is looking really tall. I laid a piece of scrap foam across a couple of the upper deck supports and rolled the car under the foam...... That doesn't look good.... Really tight...... I grabbed both of my ready locos and checked them. The GE C30-7 was even tighter than the box car. Next, big boy, the EMD DD40AX. Nope, it's just not going to work that way. Apparently, I failed to take in account the additional height of the cork roadbed when I set the height for the upper deck supports. Well, I think that may be considered a little set back and a HUGE lesson learned. Time to cut some 1/4" shims for all the supports, rework two ramps and rework the side of the "mountain" as it meets the upper deck surface.......Definitely a one step forward - two step back moment.......
So, after some rework I ended up with Shim City. Added 1/4" shims to all the upper deck supports:
That was the easy part. Next, it was time to rework the ramps. I found out that the Woodland Scenics foam cutter (hot wire) can actually be used as a "fixed" height cutter. I set the wire height on the hoops, then feed a left over piece of tapered foam ramp through. Ended up with a nice "cap" for the two ramps:
The only down side is that will add a little more elevation grade to the end of the ramps but I have good locos & the math still wasn't too crazy. Only thing left is to putty & sand.
LARGE lesson learned but "raising the roof" made a big difference:
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