Moving from Design to Roadbed

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# A.1 Moving from Design to Roadbed

Your design is complete and your now ready to lay track. How do you go from the computer screen to the roadbed?

The best way to move your design from computer to roadbed is to print out a full scale copy (or portions) of the layout. During the print process the orientation of the print grid can be adjusted so the printout will line up with the tracks.

If you have cut-sheet printer (like a laser or ink-jet) set the Ignore Page Margins toggle on the print dialog. Normally there is an unprintable margin around the edge of the page and XTrackCAD only prints on the printable area, which means you would have to trim or overlay the pages. Setting the Ignore Page Margins toggle makes XTrackCAD ignore this margin so you can just abut the paper. Also, turn on Print Roadbed Outline and set your roadbed width.

If you have a continuous form printer (like a dot matrix) you can print a series of pages to form a continuous strip as long as you need. I use an old wide carriage printer that was being thrown out and can print 8' by 13.2" strips. Accuracy is not critical, 9-pin will do fine. You may need to experiment with setting the Landscape/Portrait modes on the Printer Setup and the Print dialogs and rotating the Print Grid to get the pages in the correct orientation. In particular I've found it best to set the Printer Setup dialog to Portrait mode and select Landscape Page Format on the XTrackCAD Printer dialog.

Once you have a full scale print-out of your layout (or portion, if you have a larger layout you don't want to do it all at once) you need to transfer this to the roadbed. Here's two methods that can be used:

- Use a spray adhesive (such as 3M Super 77) to glue the print-out to the roadbed. This is very messy, takes more glue than expected and is very unforgiving of mistakes. You may want to use this method only for small sections of very complicated track-work.

- Tape the print-out to the roadbed then using a tracing wheel (available at Sewing shops), trace the center-line of the track and roadbed outline. At this point consider places when you'll want to widen the roadbed to support signals, switch machines, joints etc.