Turnout operation

Well well well, there's life on this blog after all! Sorry for the absence of anything at all on here for the last few months folks, but basically nothing much has happened in that time!

However, I decided I really needed to just get on and do something - anything! I must confess to having a brief moment or two recently when I wondered if I should just jack in the whole P4 malarkey on the basis that it was to blame for my lack of progress, but I soon saw sense and realised that actually it's got nothing to do with the gauge or scale I happen to have chosen and a lot to do with the realities of daily life, coupled with a general tendency to get sidetracked into other things for months on end!

Anyway, the two key areas that have been holding things up for goodness knows how long are: getting the turnouts operational, and getting my first P4-converted loco up and running. Both are less than straightforward, although this has been due in large part to a kind of rabbit-in-the-headlights instinct - it all seems t0o overwhelming so I'll just stand here rooted to the spot and do nothing...!

The best course of action in these situations is to break things down into manageable chunks. So I decided I should start with the turnouts. They're built, and the Masokits tiebars are ready to install, but that's as far as I'd got. 1) I'm concerned that when I try to solder the tiebars to the switch blades I'll end up de-soldering the tiebars themselves and undoing all the hours of work I put in assembling them in the first place! 2) I really don't know how I'm going to operate them.

OK, so the soldering business is just one of those things where I think you have to give it a go and hope for the best, and if the worst does happen then you just have to bite the bullet and backtrack a bit. Living and learning and all that!

But on the operational side of things, some careful thought and planning was needed. I've spent hours in the past reading up on various different solutions for turnout operation, but none of it has ever quite fallen into place for me. What I need is a solution that is simple, low-tech, idiot-proof, and that I can put together using the most basic and readily available 'ingredients' possible.

So, having a day off work, I popped down to B&Q to see what bits and pieces I could collect together. Perhaps this was the wrong way round to be doing things, but, as I say, sometimes you just have to get out there and do something, even if it is in the wrong order! (Actually, I did spend most of yesterday evening reading various posts on the Scalefour Society forum and RMWeb about turnout operation which planted a few new  ideas and revived a few old ones.)

Anyway, to cut a long story short, after a half hour or so browsing the aisles at B&Q, and a few pounds spent on random bits and pieces which may or may not come in useful, and then an hour or so sat with pen and paper musing over various ideas, I have come up with a plan. Well, half a plan anyway!

Here it is!

I'm not expecting you to be able to figure out what it is just by looking at that load of scribbles though, so I'll try to explain roughly what I have come up with so far.

I had already decided that I'd follow the recommendation that comes with the Masokits tiebars and attach 0.5mm wire that will run out under the stock rail. This will terminate in a 90 degree bend and a couple of millimetres of wire locating downwards into the top end of a piece of brass tube projecting through a slot in the baseboard up to surface level. The bit I hadn't figured out before was what the tube would be attached to underneath or how it would be moved! However, the theory at least is that the turnout/tiebar/wire assembly above the baseboard will be a separate unit from whatever is underneath the baseboard (including the vertical tube), hopefully making life a little easier when it comes to assembling everything (and potentially, disassembling it if that should ever be necessary in the future) as they can be dealt with completely seperately.

For better or worse, I had already ruled out electrical point operation, or memory wire, or anything else that relies on purchasing 'specialist' equipment. As cheap and simple and basic as possible, that's what I'm after!#

So, to try and figure out what exactly was necessary.

Well, the first thing is, the tube that projects up through the slot in the baseboard needs to be held absolutely vertical with no possibility of 'wobble'. It needs to be attached securely and firmly to something under the baseboard. As I don't have the necessary tools to work with metal, the obvious answer is a block of wood, with a hole drilled to the exact diameter of the tubing, allowing it to be held firmly and vertically. Then this block needs to be able to slide back and forth under the baseboard in a controlled manner - in some sort of metal or plastic channel attached to the underside of the baseboard in which the wooden block can run. It will also need stoppers/buffers at each end so it can only slide the required 2 or 3mm to throw the switch blades - this will stop any undue stresses being placed on the turnout itself.

Then the sliding block needs attaching to some sort of rod which will allow for manual operation from the front or back of the layout. I bought a coil of galvanised steel garden wire from B&Q along with one of those hollow net curtain wires. The steel wire runs nicely inside the net curtain wire, which can be attached to the underside of the baseboard using cable clips (the sort of thing you use to attach telephone cables to walls). At one end the wire will simply be bent 90 degrees and threaded through the end of the sliding wooden block, and at the other end it will protrude out of the baseboard edge.

This just leaves the question of (a) how to translate a movement of say a couple of centimetres at the baseboard edge to the 2 or 3mm required at the turnout itself and (b) how to 'lock' the whole thing one way or the other.

With regard to (a), by far the simplest solution to me seems to be to form a loop in the wire (without the constraints of the net curtain wire sheath at this point) which would act as a basic kind of spring. The wire is stiff enough that the loop would not diffuse the initial movement entirely, but flexible enough to take up the excess movement, so allowing a 2cm movement at one end to be translated to 2 or 3mm at the other, with the stress being taken up entirely by the loop in the wire - the stoppers/buffers on the sliding block mechanism ensuring that it and the turnout above don't take any unnecessary strain.

With regard to (b), I have yet to come up with a solution, but again - I'm looking for the least complex one!!

Polarity switching will be achieved by means of simple connectors engaging with the wire or sliding block (again, not entirely sure how but as simple and non-technical as possible!).

I know that to the engineers out there this will all sound so ridiculously Heath Robinson-ish (whoever Heath Robinson is) that I'll probably be laughed out of town, but so be it! I'm not an engineer and honestly don't care what the stuff under the baseboard looks like, as long as it works, is reliable, and is quick, easy and cheap to make. If I had to make it out of Lego to achieve those aims I'd have no shame in doing so!!

Anyway, let's see if I can actually have anything to show for all this in a reasonable timescale.... Set your reminders for 2015!!!!

After further checks this morning I think the discrepancy in the angle of the crossing vee is small enough to get away with, once the wing and vee rails are in their correct positions. As you can see from the photo, I used pins to hold the rails in their correct positions and then sighted along the approach rails from either end, as well as checking with the track gauges to ensure the stock rails wouldn't be pushed out of alignment, and it all looks ok. Phew!

Remedial work

Buoyed by my success with the tiebars the other day, I decided to have a crack at rebuilding one of the common crossings on the layout. I'd been in two minds about tackling it for some time but had kept procrastinating. The problem was that I'd used thin metal strip rather than copperclad strip to connect the vee and wing rails, so the crossing had required some additional packing to bring it up to the correct height. However, I'd rather overdone the packing so there was a bit of a hump in the centre of the crossing. At the time I'd thought it 'would do' as it wasn't immediately obvious on looking at it, but as usually happens with such things, the more time passed the more I realised it really wasn't ideal at all and that the problem was quite evident when running stock over it.

I managed to extricate the offending crossing without damaging the surrounding track. Then, using the soldering iron, I removed the metal strips so the wing rails were detached from the vee. Then came problem number one. All my vees were soldered up using 188 degree solder and the only thing that stopped them coming apart when soldering up the rest of the crossing was by not dwelling too long with the iron. Well, you guessed it, in the course of unsoldering the crossing, the vee came unsoldered too! Darn! Lesson number one - silver solder your crossing vees so they don't come apart later!

Some time later I had reformed the vee to the correct angle (one of the EM Gauge Society crossing vee jigs would really have made this so much simpler, I just don't have any way of getting hold of one short of going to an EMGS show - unless any of you good readers happen to be an EMGS member and could get hold of one for me....?)

It was time to fix up the crossing again. Previously I'd done this by sticking a printout of the crossing template (from Templot) onto a piece of chipboard with double sided tape, stuck the connecting strips to the template using double-sided tape, tinned the strips, tinned the underside of the rails, then positioned the vee and wing rails using drawing pins to hold them in place before applying heat from the soldering iron to cause the tinned surfaces to join together.

There were two problems with this approach, although I'd sort of managed previously despite them. (1) Trying to push drawing pins into chipboard is pretty difficult and its even more difficult as a result to get the straight (coupled to the fact the large head means you can't see how straight they are very easily!). (2) Just relying on the tinned surfaces melting together to hold everything in place is a bit hit and miss.

So, this time around I replaced the chipboard with a cork floor tile (soft enough to make pushing pins in much easier but form enough to hold the pins in place), and replaced the drawing pins with quilters pins (the local craft shop had all sorts to choose from), these being much longer (although there is the risk of them bending, even when pushing into cork, if you're too rough with them) allowing for more pins to be used and with greater precision to hold the rails in place. Also, although I still tinned the copperclad strips, I used lots of flux and a blob of solder carried on the tip of the iron to make each joint - much better.

However, all this being said, I have to confess it still took me several hours to get the job done. Lesson number 2: always check, check and check again to make sure angles, measurements and alignments are exactly correct - one thing I keep on being made aware of though my own mistakes is the really small tolerances you have to work to in P4. There's a tendency to think "It'll do", but, as I've already said, this soon comes back to bite you! I had to take the crossing apart and start again several times because things weren't lined up quite right.

Even now, after placing the rebuilt crossing in situ, I realise that the angle of the vee is slightly too acute - it's only a fraction of a degree but enough to be obvious when sighting along the adjacent rails.... the question is is it enough to merit taking it all apart again, or can I get away with leaving it...???

Masokitsm

Grrrr... I have spent almost 6 hours of this weekend trying to make up four - yes, just a measly FOUR - Masokits tiebars! So far, seven have gone in the bin!

Yes, I've made these things before, but they don't get any easier the second, or third, or fourth time around. They are just SO fiddly!

Question to those more experienced than me - is this par for the course with this sort of thing, or does it indicate a particularly high level of cack-handedness?!?

(OK, I admit that four of the seven binned items would have been fine except for the fact that I totally forgot to clean the brass etches before I started that particular batch, so there was no chance of them soldering up properly! It may have had something to do with a certain alcoholic beverage being consumed at the time.....)

By the way, the 'm' at the end of this post's title is intentional!

Switch blades

I had quite a productive modelling session yesterday afternoon - at least by my current standards -getting the remaining four switch blades filed up and ready for installation.

Filing switch blades isn't a particularly difficult or even time consuming task, but does require a bit of care. By the time I got to the fourth blade it took me about 10 minutes to make. The process is nothing revolutionary, but for those who are unfamiliar with it, here's what's involved:

First the rail is cut to length, allowing for a small (0.5mm - 1mm) insulation gap at the heel and for the toe to be flush with the leading edge of the first slide-chaired timber. Depending on the curvature of the turnout, one switch blade will be marginally longer than the other, so it's important to remember which blade you are working on.

After cleaning up the rail ends with a file, the rail is clamped to the right hand edge of an offcut of veneered chipboard, leaving a couple of inches of rail free to work on and with the end of the rail flush to the front end of the board. Using a small flat needle file, a taper about 25mm in length is filed into the head of the rail only (taking great care to avoid the base of the rail). The taper should just cut into the web of the rail at the extreme end.

Then, using a small pair of pliers, a very slight bend is made in the rail at the end of the taper, so that the tapered edge lines up with the straight edge of the rail - a bit of eyeballing down the length of the rail is called for.

The rail is then turned over and clamped down again but with the protruding flare of the rail base slotted into the groove so it lies flat. A full-width taper is then filed into this side of the rail, the length determined by the angle of the turnout (for a standard 'C' turnout this equates to around 33mm - at least for the GWR type I model). The rail should taper to a fine point a the end, with just the base on one side protruding.

Finally, the end of the blade is rounded off slightly at the top, and cleaned up ready for installation.

And then there were two!

More turnout pics

Thought I'd upload a couple of pics of the turnout with check rails added...

Masokits tie bar

I made one of the Masokits tie bars this afternoon. I managed to break one etching in the process (wiggling one of the tabs too much trying to get a good fold made it snap off!) and all things considered it was probably the most fiddly thing I've ever done (I can see why they're called 'Masokits' now!) but it was also extremely enjoyable (there's nothing better than being completely absorbed in making something) and the end result looks pretty neat (although the photos are cruel to say the least - the actual size is about half the size it appears in the thumbnails below!). Next job - installing it.

Turnout construction

Finally got round to doing some more work on the (first) turnout this afternoon. All that remains now is to install the wing rails, tiebars and operating mechanism, add cosmetic rail breaks and fishplates, and wire everything up.

My solitary P4 wagon glides through the turnout without the slightest bump or lurch, even without wing rails, so that's a good sign!

Each rail has two copper wires soldered to the underside which pass through holes in the timbers and baseboard. The soldered joints are concealed with cosmetic chairs making them completely invisible.

Common crossing

My first scratch-built common crossing. (Well actually it's my second, but the first one ended up in the bin after some over-zealous 'adjustments' with the soldering iron!).

In the end I found the best instructions to follow were those on EM Gauge Society manual sheet 1.2.0 (4). The crossing is assembled as a unit, soldered to brass strips at the timber positions (these still require trimming on the photos).

Here's the completed assembly:


And here it is temporarily in situ:


Obviously we'll see how successful I have actually been once I've built the whole turnout and I can actually run some stock through it!

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?

Turnout wiring - 2

Here's a revised (and clearer!) version of my turnout wiring diagram. I realised that only the frog/crossing itself need actually be switched, not the rails beyond the turnout.

The blue line represents the wire/rails that will be switched depending on the way the turnout is set. The brown colour represents the copper-clad strips: one piece connecting the rails of the crossing, and one connecting the switch/closure rail with the adjacent stock rail (no need for multiple copper-clad strips at each location is there?).

Insulated rail joints are shown in black - all other rail joints will be represented cosmeticly.

Rather than trying to pass the dropper wires up through the sleepers/copper-clad, solder on top and file flat (which I tried and found that filing the joint flat basically removes the joint!!), the wires will come up immediately adjacent to the timber/copper-clad and be bent over and soldered on top of the copper-clad where it protrudes slightly from beneath the rail. (This will be on the non-viewing side of the rail to hide it from view, and further disguised with the general dirt, grass and weeds that will encroach on much of the trackwork anyway).

Turnout wiring

Electronics has never been my strong point, so I'm having to think this through carefully before I do it all wrong! I think the diagram below is correct...

The insulating gaps are represented by the double lines across the rails. The connections between the stock and switch rails will be copper-clad strip stuck to the top of the timbers (with the wire coming up at the side and soldered flat along the top behind the rail out of sight - I think this will work better than what I was trying before), and the connections between the various rails at the crossing will be thin brass strip soldered directly to the bottom of the rails before laying, with the wires soldered to the bottom of this.

I'm not 100% sure if I've got the wiring diagram correct or if there's a simpler way - my thinking is that when the main road is set, the red switch will be 'on' and the black switch 'off', and when the turnout road is set, the black switch will be 'on' and the red switch 'off' (to use complete layman's terms!).

If I've got any of this wrong, can someone please tell me!!!

Soldering woes

The last few days, in between feeding and changing our 2 week old baby, I've been trying to make some progress with track laying on the layout. I've not got far - and not just because of the baby!

What has held me up is something I hadn't even given much thought to before - the electrical connections to the turnout. I've been trying to follow the instructions in one of the Scalefour Digest sheets (the one about turnout construction using C&L components). It says to cut small lengths of copper-clad strip and glue them to the 3 timbers beneath the crossing-V and also to the two timbers at the heels of the switches - between the switch and stock rails. Then it says to drill holes through the copper-clad, timbers and baseboard, pass a wire through each and solder it so it's flush to the top of the copper-clad; then lay the rails as normal and solder where they pass over the copper-clad strips to make the electrical connection.

Now, I've had all sorts of problems trying to follow this method:

Initially I glued the copper-clad strips to the timbers using 5-minute epoxy, but didn't account for the fact that the '5 minute' refers to when it's touch-dry, not when it's stuck solid, so as soon as I started drilling with the mini-drill, the copper-clad simply came loose.

Next I tried with super-glue and left it over night. However, when I tried to solder the dropper wires into the holes, the heat from the soldering iron melted the glue! Even disregarding this, using normal 188 wire solder and flux I ended up with a huge blob of solder on top of each piece of copper-clad, but no bond between the copper-clad and the wire (maybe because I had the top of the wire flush with the top of the copper-clad so the heat wasn't getting to it properly).

So I switched back to epoxy and left it to dry a bit longer. In the meantime I experimented with soldering wire into drilled copper-clad and found that solder paint is the best option to avoid the big blob. Also, it makes more sense to leave a bit of the wire sticking out above the top of the copper-clad while soldering, then snip and file flat. But once it's been filed flat there is so little solder that the join is pretty weak and I don't like the thought of a weak joint buried beneath the ballast etc.

Having put it aside for a while I've been thinking about it and started to wonder exactly why the copper-clad strips need to have dropper wires soldered to them anyway. Surely they are simply there to make the electrical connection between the rails. The power feed can be supplied direct to the rail at the toe of the turnout can't it?

Track laying commences!

After 2 1/2 years of planning, blogging, baseboard building, house moves, and general procrastination, track laying finally began today!

This is the small, 4'x2' industrial layout I posted the plans for a couple of weeks ago. The photo shows the single baseboard (one of the ones I built some months ago, originally intended for the larger branch terminus layout which is now on hold) with Templot track templates stuck down onto the cork tile-covered surface.

I've stuck down the sleepers and turnout timbers on the front sidings. I've decided to stick with C&L plastic sleepers for this project.

Now, I really ought to think of a name for this layout...

Sleeper/chair combinations

I bought a sample set of ply sleepers and crossing timbers from Exactoscale recently and thought I'd compare them to the C&L plastic ones I'm already familiar with. Appearance-wise I think the ply sleepers are far superior (despite what I've heard some people say to the contrary - the wood grain may not be perfectly to scale, but then it's sometimes illusion not exact scale that is the key to things looking right in model form). However, in terms of the strength of the bond between sleepers and the C&L platsic chairs, the C&L platsic sleepers are hands down winners. I did a little test with a plastic sleeper, untreated ply sleeper, and a ply sleeper that had been pre-coloured using a wash of thinned Enamel paints, using Butanone to atach two chairs to each. After 12 hours or so I attacked each one with a pair of tweezers, to see how much pressure was needed before each gave way. The chairs attached to the coloured ply sleepers gave way first, with fairly little pressure required to seperate the chairs cleanly from the sleeper. The untreated ply was next, with a little more pressure required to acheive the same result. The platsic sleeper was the clear winner - no amount of pressure could seperate the chair and sleeper - in the end the chair itself broke.

Now obviously this is a fairly limited test. I haven't tried other types of solvent/glue and I haven't taken into account what sort of forces are ever actually likely to be exerted on track in the normal operational life of a model. However, it does highlight the fact that the bond between ply sleepers and platsic chairs is not all that great, and this concerns me. I'm now not sure what to do. I'd be much happier with the strength of the plastic sleepers, but much prefer the appearance of the ply ones. Any advice anyone??

New book purchase

Oh dear, I've really gone and done it now... I've bought 'GWR Switch and Crossing Practice' published by the GWR Study Group.

Any ideas I had about not worrying too much about the finer details and concentating on the overall look and feel of my model have gone right out the window - along with, I have to confess, any street cred I might have had left!!! Hands up, this is a truly dull book in any 'normal' person's view, but I'm afraid to say I'm finding it quite fascinating! Sad, I know!

Anyway, for anyone equally sad who isn't already aware of its existence, you can find out more about the book here. I managed to order mine online via Biblio.

00-SF track gauges

My 00-SF roller track gauges arrived from the USA today. Manufactured in brass by Russ Simpson they appear extremely neat little pieces of kit, with very clean machining and a very snug fit on code 75 rail.

Brian Tulley is currently sourcing a manufacturer for roller check rail gauges, and I've indicated my interest in being part of an order for a pair of these.

Hopefully I'll be in a position to start building some track soon!

For more info, see the 00-SF Yahoo group.

00-SF

In the process of preparing to start track building I went back to Ian Rice's "An Approach to Finescale Track" for a bit of a refresher course. In the process of mulling over the various critical gauges and dimensions required, I found myself searching around the various forums etc. on the web for some more advice, and stumbled across a thread discussing 00-SF (otherwise known as 'EM minus 2' apparently).

I have to confess that until now I'd not really pinned down an exact set of standards to use, beyond the vague notion of '00 finescale' and had shied away from further investigation in the slightly foolish hope that I might be able to get everything to work purely by a process of trial and error (for which you might like to read 'wing and a prayer'!). So I was immediately grabbed by the proposition that here is a set of track standards that allow one to run R-T-R locos and stock (at least of the more modern varieties, which is all I will be using anyway) without any re-wheeling or re-gauging (again, something I have no desire to get into at the moment), on hand-built track that has considerably improved appearance and running quality over 'standard' 00.

Without getting too technical, this is achieved by using a minimum track gauge of 16.2mm (EM minus 2mm) with crossing flangeway gaps of 1mm. For more information, see the 00-SF Yahoo group. At first it may seem perverse to further reduce the gauge of what is already under-gauge track, in the pursuit of enhanced realism, but actually when you understand it it makes a lot of sense. Actually, the 0.3mm reduction in gauge is only a 1.8% reduction, so not really noticeable to the naked eye, but the real difference is in the 1mm flangeways, a 20% reduction which makes a noticeable visible improvement and apparently leads to much smoother running through turnouts.

This all seems to fit the bill quite nicely for what I'm looking to achieve, so I've made some enquiries on the 00-SF group about getting hold of some gauges so I can start building to this gauge. I've also re-jigged my Templot plan using the new gauge specification as for some reason I had it set to the BRMSB standard before (although, having already printed out the track plan and started cutting and sticking it into the various sections required for construction, I need to check whether its worth reprinting it or not - I may be able to get away with the BRMSB version and simply rely on the track gauges to achieve the correct measurements, as at first glance the actual flow and radii of the track etc. appears largely unaltered with the new settings).

Baseboards

...again!

Decided to bring the baseboards in out of the garage this week so I can make a proper start on the layout, having figured that the additional woodwork (addition of backdrop, fascia, proscenium arch etc.) can be carried out at a later date without requiring too much serious manhandling.

I really need to make some sort of portable stand(s) so I can work on it at a comfortable height - I just need to make a trip to B&Q. The plan is for 3 or 4 hinged A-frame free-standing supports on which the layout will simply rest, possibly with some sort of makeshift effort to prevent it getting knocked off if needs be!!! All a bit Heath Robinson-ish I know, but if it works...! Ideal viewing height for me is probably around 4'6"-5' but I may need to make a bit of a concession to make working on the layout more practical. Anyway, for now the basebaords are sitting on the floor in the spare room!

I've covered most of the surface with 1/8" cork sheet to help absorb running noise and also provide a slightly raised sub-surface into which the buildings can be set.

During the process it became obvious that the surfaces of the two boards weren't actually lining up quite as accurately as I'd thought, partly due to some minor warping of the ply (which worried me a little - hopefully bringing them in out of the garage should prevent this worsening) but mainly due to the horizontal placement of the alignment dowels being slightly off. Rather than try to realign the dowels (it was enough hassle just getting them lined up with each other, let alone trying to get the surfaces level as well!!) I decided the simplest option would just be to build up the surface of one of the boards where it was a couple of millimetres lower than the other, using layers of paper roughly torn to shape and glued down one on top of the other. I know it's a bit of a bodge but it seems to have done the trick OK and having laid a few lengths of track over the join to check it, it seems to be quite adequate.

Next job then is to make a start on the trackwork. I've printed out two full-size Templot track plans. One of these will be glued to the baseboard surface as a guide, the other will be cut into sections and used to build the track in manageable chunks away from the layout, which will then be pieced together on the layout using the guide trackplan to line it all up. That's the idea anyway! As with everything on this layout, it's going to be a case of trial and error.