There are various materials used for base plate of raised tracks. I heard the most durable material is concrete board used for house exterior. The problems with concrete board are its heavy weight and difficulty in cutting. One of my friends used this and he used wet diamond circular saw to cut them. The cutting work sound very dirty and I do not have such a tool. Plywood for concrete mould for construction work is used in some layout of my friends. However these boards have to be cut in length of the track base. I am not keen to make more than 100m of cutting of the boards.
One article of “Australian Model Engineering” recommended “Weathertex” weatherboards for this purpose. There two types of strips are available 200mm and 300mm widths. These widths are quite suitable for the purpose. So I decided to use Weathertex.

 

I ordered Weathertex strips online. I could not find any of Weathertex products in hardware store. Their prices were not expensive comparing to other materials.

と、言うことで通販で注文した。これ普通のホームセンターで売ってないんだよね。値段はそんなに高くなかった。指定した日に配達されていた。

I ordered 16 of 200mm wide for straight bases and 10 of 300mm wide for curved bases. The thickness of the strips is about 10mm and bit floppy as seen. I can bring bar materials of length of up to 3m by my car and will buy other materials as required from close hardware store. I do not want fill up my barrage with heaps of materials.

梱包をといてみる。これは厚さが10mm位しかないので当然ヘラヘラ。長さは3660mmある。直線用に200mm幅のものを16枚。曲線用に幅300mmのものを10枚注文した。あとの材料は近くのホームセンターで必要な都度買ってくることにした。棒状の物なら私の車には3mの物まで積めるので問題ない。

As first step of construction, I started land survey. I bought this from eBay. A laser leveller.

材料のめどが付いたのでまずは測量から始める。こんなモノを買ってしまった。レーザー水準器。eBayで買ったのでこれも安かった。

We measured the heights of some locations of construction site.

これで建設予定地の標高を測り図面に記入していった。

I am planning to mount the track directly to the fence poles at the back, and put marks of height data on the poles.

塀沿いに走るところは塀の支柱に直接線路を取り付ける予定なので塀の支柱に標高マークを付ける。

Laser pointer seems like this.
Then I had to decide the height of the raised track. It would be better to have bit higher installation for ease of loco operation. However higher the installation may give the steeper slope to connection line to existing layout. Also I want to have easy step over of the tracks by my wife. Maybe 400mm high from the ground would be the maximum for my wife. So I decided to install new line 300mm higher than existing line and 400mm higher than ground level where we have busiest traffic.

レーザーが当たってる部分はこんなふうに見える。ここにマークをつけていった。

高架部分の高さをどうするかが問題なんだが、見栄え、走らせやすさを考えると少し高めの方がいい。しかし、既設のレイアウトと繋ぐ予定なので高くすると勾配がきつくなりすぎる。また、かみさんが線路を跨ぐことを考えると一番手前の部分で地上から400mmが限度と思われる。と、言うことで跨ぐことが多い場所で地上から400mmとすることにした。これは既設レイアウトから300mm上で、勾配もあまりきつくならないはず。