O gauge Track

It's all go at Platform1 with new small layout builds
I'll have to dig out the Guild book to refresh the memory on the design.
I can see a new traverser build on the way soon

 

following this Paul ... er what flavour were the lollies? .. honestly good luck with it mate.

Ian vt

 

A great start in O scale track building, I managed to pick up a used point from the Doncaster toy and train fair just before the new year, it needs a little tlc but for £15 I'm happy. But I need another 5 so I'm going to build them myself. I planned on using copperclad sleepers but after seeing your coffee stirrer sleepers, (I've got a bag full too!) I'm going to follow your build closely. I will buy the rail from Marcways in Sheffield, its close by and easy to park near, I've got some chairs from my last build, I will need loads more but its enough to get started.
Right I'm ready to start building, so, lets go mate!!!!!!!
Ready when you are .

Cheer's, Pete.

Ps, what turnout plan will you use, I've downloaded the free Peco L and R plans and will print them off as needed.

 

Toto wrote:

Not even a scissors crossover in sight too ?

 

Here is a B8 - B8 crossover turnout I made a couple of years ago using C&L components and scratching my own crossing Vee's, note that the wing rail is extended beyond the crossing nose on the turnout side to form a parallel wing rail, this is standard practice for any turnout on the big railway where points are inserted within a curve and in straight crossovers on passenger lines. Now a word of caution here as I fell into this nice little trap, if you build turnouts using C&L chairs then I recommend using the C&L rail which has a marginally thicker profile, I had a purchased a Marcway point kit from the dreaded ebay thinking this would be a good source of rail... how wrong I was as this rail is a thinner section which doesn't like seating properly in the C&L chairs. I have nothing against Marcway or Peco points but for me I'm looking for that little extra detail which a C&L track template will offer. cheers for now Paul

Rob Pulham wrote:

 

paul_l wrote:

You are very welcome Paul, if I can offer any advice here I will, building points in O Gauge is no different from building them on the big railway, something that I was involved with in my time in a former life on BR. I'll post you a couple pictures here to demonstrate how headaches can happen.

Here is the siding end of the B8 crossover road I posted earlier, what we can see is tight gauge beyond the stretcher bars on the turnout side, tight gauge occurred by me inadvertently setting the thinner profile Peco and Marcway rail too tight in the gauging rollers... how did this happen? Well as you gauge up the rail by gluing the C&L chair onto the sleeper the thinner section rail tends to "roll" within the groove of the rollers and tilt inwards inside the C&L chairs, the result is tight gauge, with C&L rail the rail head is held firmly and in position within the rollers. I use 4 rollers spaced every third sleeper apart when setting the gauge, remember if tight gauge starts to occur unchecked the gauge will become incrementally narrower and bind the wheel sets of rolling stock passing over. When this happens the wheels will climb the rail and the flange will ride along the top of the rail... this happened to me just after the point blade openings. Everytime wagons passed through the turnout from the siding the third wagon would ride up over the points and derail on the first wheelset. If we count the sleepers from left to right in the points on my picture we can see the third timber in is the one on the point blade ends and is fitted with a soleplate, now two more timber past and we come to the first 9 foot timber, here we had the start of tight gauge and the cause of the derailments, the camera picks up the inward kink of the outside rail. Now count three more timbers in and we can see some of the P1 Block and S1 chairs have been removed, this is where the tight gauge had started to make the points useless. The timbers are ABS plastic and the solvent I use here is Carr's Butanone, the remedy was simple, free the old chairs off by sliding a scalpel blade underneath widen the gauge and reset using replacement chairs. this picture records what I was doing and now the problem is solved. The picture was taken before replacement new chairs had been fitted. I opted to fit new Pi chairs and their Blocks because the older ones became damaged on removal and meant reusing them would have impaired the free swinging of the switch blades. Cheers Paul

 

Now I'm not trying to bomb your thread Paul with my pictures but this general shot shows the geometric relationship of a crossover road inserted into the transition of a curve, just like on the big railway the same mathematical principles apply. Now we need to get hold of the PW gang and get them to clear away all those half chaired sleepers that have been dumped up the batter edge. I think they could be in that little cabin on the right playing cards