One of my reservations about moving over to Unitrack for a temporary layout is that I'm not too fond of the ideas of the trains running on the floor. This just seems like a bad idea all around. I'm particularly thinking of hair getting run up in the wheels, not to mention all the other dust and junk that it would pickup.
I had an idea on how to fix this.... a viaduct system that acts as a riser to bring the track off the carpet. Sure it's still technically on the floor, but at least now it's a distance off that things like hair and dust shouldn't be as big a deal. Plus it will probably look pretty cool and unique.
Viaduct Concept Without Track
Viaduct Concept With Track
As far as construction, I was thinking of 2 possibilities:
- Make them out of wood
This would probably be the easier and perhaps cheaper (I'll have to do the math), but certainly longer route. A jig could be created to line up all the parts, and then I could figure out a way to mass cut things, perhaps 3 at a time to speed up the process. It would be doable with the equipment I have, but would probably take a while. - Make them out of plastic (resin)
I could instead make 1 master in wood, and then make a rubber mold off of that. I could then use that mold to mass produce the trusses. This has a couple advantages: (1) I could actually model the viaduct to look like a model bridge with detail and such (2) the supporting trusses would be all one piece of resin, not glued like the wood. I imagine this would give them more durability over time. A potential third positive is if they worked well I could perhaps sell them in sets on ebay. :D
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