Saturday, March 20, 2010

Curved Turnout

I need three curved turnouts for the Global III engine facilities.  Since it is not cost effective to purchase a fasttracks assembly fixture for just three turnouts, I am doing these the old fashion way.  I taped a template to a piece of wood, spiked down the PC ties and soldered the rails in place freehand.  I was still able to use the fasttracks tools for filing rails and used my #8 fixture for soldering the frog point.  The resulting turnout came out pretty good, but took me 90 minutes versus about 45-60 for turnouts with the fixtures.  The turnout is 30"/20" radius.

After installing the turnout, I found out that I needed lots more fine tuning, filing and tweaking than usual. But its in and works great.  Makes me realized, though, how much I appreciate the assemblt fixtures.


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4 comments:

  1. UnknownMarch 23, 2010 at 4:31 PM

    I've been watching your site for a while now and couldn't help but to post a comment on this one. let me help a little, . (1)rubber cement pc ties down,(2) hold rails in place with straight pins in the 3 point method to get a natural curve. (3) use a turnout throw rod along side rail to align frogs and pionts and last but not least stager the end rails so solder joints aren't next to each other for realistic appearance ~JL~

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  2. genevasubMarch 25, 2010 at 9:51 PM

    Thanks for the hints John. #1 and #2 make sense but I'm not following you on 3&4

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  3. UnknownMarch 26, 2010 at 2:02 PM

    #3 take a piece of steel rod, from a sw machine kit, and slide it in along the >inside< edge or side grove of your rail through the frogs past the pionts and all the rails should be flush against the rod,this is quick way to check if everything is pefectly aligned, so wheels can roll smooth without catching, even without frog guard or guide rails in place yet. little practice and you'll have perfect alignment each time without fast-track jig

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  4. UnknownMarch 26, 2010 at 2:10 PM

    #4 all your turnouts have fixed cut off rails, with rail joiners next to each other, set some of them at prototype 39 feet apart. try doing a x over with no rail joiners at all, gets a little tricky but end result is a very smooth x over, plus at rail joints at 39' you'll get that infamous rocking motion. can i send you some pics of my work?

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