With a Little Help From My Friends

Today, Louis-Marie and I went to St-Stanislas, QC, to visit our good old friend Yvan Déry and pay a New Year visit. It was an occasion to chat and also see how he was doing with his layout updates. Yvan models the North Shore section of National Transcontinental between Donnacona and Rivière-du-Milieu circa 1948, including Hervey-Junction, Garneau and several rural towns along the line.

Yvan is currently redoing the main line and junctions at his Garneau yard after years of tweaking old #4 and #5 turnouts. As he said to me a few weeks ago, he wanted to upgrade the trackage with code 83 track and #6 electrofrog turnouts. So we decided to give him some help to turn what could be a nightmare into something much achievable.

At first glance, it was clear the old fiberboard roadbed had to go. It was in poor shape and uneven due to track and ballast removal. There was also an important vertical misalignment of about 1/8" between two different plywood sheets of different height. We managed to convince Yvan the best course of action was to start from scratch with a new roadbed and with a level plywood benchwork. His original plan was to work around the issue, but with three of us, the manpower required was assembled to tackle quickly and efficiently the challenge. It would make Yvan's life much easier when laying track later this winter. Fortunately, he had all the required material on hand and he agreed with out plan.

Louis-Marie removing old fiberboard

Removing the old fiberboard was the biggest challenge because we ran out quickly of fresh cutter blade, but by lunch time, it was all gone and Louis-Marie had managed to remove the vertical gap. Sure, the track would never be perfectly level in the area, but it was now so smooth that you can barely notice it if you don't use a long metal ruler to check it up.

While Louis-Marie worked on the benchwork, I was at the workbench fitting together the new turnouts. I had to shorten them so they could fit the existing trackwork that would be kept, including the small yard and the junction track. Yvan's original plan was to keep the yard turnouts intact, but we managed to replace one with a #6, which greatly improved the appearance and functionality.

The new mainline roadbed starting to take shape

By 2 P.M., the new fiberboard was in place and we started to draw the new track centerlines using the set of assembled Peco turnouts as a guide. To make sure Yvan would have all the correct alignments for his new track, we laid one strip of cork roadbed for the mainline. That way, he will only need to add the other roadbed using the same alignment.

At 3 P.M., we had reached the goals we had set for ourselves. From that point, it Yvan will lay the track by himself and it's clear the new mainline will look much better than the original one.

Finally, I stopped at BV Hobby on the return trip to get a few pre-owned cars I had seen a few days before and which will serve as starting point for future modelling project. Expect more flat cars, hoppers and reefers in the future!