Post by highwayman97 on Nov 2, 2018 11:02:34 GMT -5
I came to US-1 via Life-Like. My wife bought me the High Iron and Burnin' Rubber set and that expanded into more Life-Like trains and slots before I bought any US-1. So when I first began doing table top style display layouts of US-1 I used Life-Like supports from the Elevated City Rails to support my railroad, and Life-Like racing supports for US-1 track.
I had been lucky enough to obtain a decent amount of both types of supports, but recently came to realise that my layout could do with a makeover. - I wanted to introduce gradients and extra circuits of roadway, that interacted with the trains and other road circuits. US-1 trucks cope really well with gradients as most slot cars seem to.
I wanted the gradients to be alongside the existing high level roadway circuit, so the inner one climbs up and they go along together through 180 degrees using both 9" and 12" curves and a few straigts before the inner one drops away. The problem here was that the Life-Like supports were both too wide and too high....115mm (4 1/3 Inches)
To add further complications the supports as supplied with US-1 are too low - 57m mm Max (2 1/4 inches).... and will not clear a railroad....
I swapped the Life-Like supports around and settled for a combination of rise 1 and rise 3 to give me a working height of 85mm (3 3/8 inches) from the ground, which is adequate to nicely clear the railway, however US-1 pillars stop short of this, so a fourth rise was made up by stacking two size 2 and one size 1 US-1 pier together like Lego, to bridge the gap between the Tyco gradient as supplied and the Life-Like supports.
I really want to use as few Life-Like roadway supports as possible on the new layout, so I am looking to get some new Tyco style 5th rise 85mm piers cut from MDF - They will be tapered on the two wide faces but stay parrallel on the sides to ease production - allowing more to be cut from the same length of MDF with less waste. I am going to need arond 30 in all........
However, I will still need to use a few Life-Like road supports. I have cut the lower level ties out of some to allow a Railroad to pass underneath, but parrallel to the road. I reckon that I could make these up to 30mm (1 1/8inches) narrower, and painting them gray will probably help them to be less visible too.......
Work continues!
James
