Saturday 2 August 2008

Turnout wiring - 3

I'm just wondering... is the reason for the conventional 2 pieces of copperclad on adjacent timbers at the heel of the switches and 3 pieces at the crossing so that each rail can be soldered to a different piece of copperclad to avoid having to try and solder both/all the rails to the same small piece of copperclad??? Anyone?

3 comments:

  1. Hi Matt,

    I think there are 2 things going on here - strengthening the rails (the crossing in particular) and attaching wires to deliver power.

    I don't think it matters how you do it but I've used spare pieces of fret from an etched kit in lieu of the copperclad for strengthening the crossing V. Iain Rice's book "An approach to building finescale track in 4mm" is a good reference for this. (Let me know if you don't have this book - I'll scan the relevant section for you.)

    As for the wires, I simply soldered them to the bottom of the rail which is very easy if you're building the turnout on a template - just either drill a hole in the baseboard for the dropper wire to pass through when you mount the rail or cut a groove in the cork sheet or foam bed (whatever you're using for the track base) and bend the wire at 90 degrees as you mount the rail, running it in the groove so that it clears the edge of the track base and can be easily routed/connected to the power source later without disturbing your trackwork in any way.

    Chris

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  2. I don't know why I forgot about Iain Rice's book! It's been sitting on my shelf all this time and I never even thought to look! It would have saved me having to work out the wiring for a start - p.96 has a good diagram which, I'm pleased to see, is pretty much the same as the one I eventually arrived at!

    I was intending to build the track in situ but maybe I should at least build the turnouts separately and then install them afterwards if it's going to make things easier.

    It certainly looks as though the idea of using a piece of brass etch soldered across the bottom of the crossing is a better idea than the copper-clad and less visually intrusive, but it seems to me that it will be a lot easier to solder it into place once the crossing is complete, with the turnout upside down and the template cut away.

    Soldering the dropper wires directly to the underside of the rail also seems a better idea than trying to solder both to copper-clad strip (with the inherent possibility of one joint coming undone when the other is made!!) - and certainly a lot less visible. My only question is how exactly to do this and where in relation to the timbers to make the join. Iain Rice's method, using punched ply sleepers is to pass the dropper wire through a rivet hole so it is completely hidden. But with the plastic C&L timbers I'm using, even if I drilled holes, I can't imagine how it would be possible to solder the wire to the rail without completely melting the timber... unless I left the timber off completely until I'd soldered the wire to the rail, then threaded the timber over the wire into position? I suppose if I positioned it carefully I could solder the wires to the rail before even starting to fix the rail into position on the timbers, and simply drop the wire down through a pre-drilled hole??

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  3. Hi Matt,

    if I positioned it carefully I could solder the wires to the rail before even starting to fix the rail into position on the timbers, and simply drop the wire down through a pre-drilled hole??

    That's what I would do.

    Chris

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