A Venture into the Garden

[JimG]

Simon,

Welding sleepers-wise, I use Acetone and find it works well.

Thanks for that pointer. I keep a small bottle of acetone around to clean up before using cyanoacrylate glues so I have enough to try out. Acetone would certainly be easier to use since it would get into the joint by capillary action. Pipe Weld, being a gel, needs to be applied to the batten then the sleeper slid across it into position and I'm never quite sure that it has been fully applied across the sleeper underside.

The curve looks really good, I hope you'll be introducing cant too

I don't think I will cant that section since it's in the station throat and there's a turnout on each end. But I do intend to cant the oval, continuous sections on the lawn when they get laid, although I'm not quite sure what speed I should calculate for.

Jim.

 

[JimG]

I removed the track from the building board yesterday and had a quick try at putting it roughly in position on the baseboards.





...and the view from on high. The board on the end is the building board for the turnout which necessitated the extension to the baseboard...



...and this gives an impression of the alignment with the curve in the main turnout road lining up with the first curve on the plain track. All the funny battening is to support the interlaced sleepers.

I'm using Cliff Barker's stainless steel rail and the flux Cliff supplies to use with the rail is supplied with a powder neutraliser which has to be mixed with water, then applied to any flux residue after use and cleaned off to stop oxidisation thereafter. I wasn't too happy at using this neutraliser so I dug around and found a stainless steel flux whose residues could be cleaned off with warm water and I had a quick test today to see how things went.



The flux is Warton Metal's Activ8 102 Stainless Steel Flux and I got mine from Rapid Online

http://www.rapidonline.com/Tools-Equipment/Activ8-102-Liquid-Flux-water-Based-500ml-85-6648

It's a 500ml bottle so I suspect I will be able to pass a fair bit of it on in my will.

Since I got it, I have read the early part of Simon's thread and found that he had used phosphoric acid. I haven't got any of that so I would have to have got it anyway. If I remember correctly, Jenolite used to be a product which acted well as a phosphoric acid flux.

I've decanted a working volume into one of these small glass scent bottles used in air freshener plug-in units. I remove the wicks and replace the plastic wick holder in place in the neck after filling. If I only half fill the bottle, the wick holder prevents any spillage if the bottle is overturned on its side. I cleaned the rail with a coarse glass fibre brush then applied the solder and got good results on the first go.


The joint had wet properly over most of the area - I think the left hand end was just beyond where the flux had been painted on so doesn't look as clean as the rest. The flux also tends to ball up with surface tension so I might experiment with a drop of washing up liquid in it to see if that improves the spread when painted on - Lord knows what chemical reaction I might get. I'll ask my brother who is an industrial chemist to see if he recommends the mix. I also found that my 45W soldering iron was just about able to cope with the soldering in the workshop but it took a few seconds to get the joint to flow. So I think my 100W Weller will be the tool of choice for further stainless rail soldering. It's got a big 6mm diameter bit with a screwdriver end so that should get the rail up to heat very quickly. The flux residues washed off fairly easily with warm water and light scrubbing with an old toothbrush. I'll leave this test piece for a while to see what oxidisation might occur.

I also found the best tool to remove the spacing webs on the Cliff Barker sleeper units. Simon warned me that they could prove unsightly since they are almost the same height as the sleepers and almost impossible to hide with ballast. So I've opted to cut them off all the sleeper units and I did the first ones with a large pair off diamond side cutters and tidied up the residue with a Stanley knife. This was quite a laborious process and took a fair time and I only did enough sleepers to make the first piece of track. I then investigated getting something like a small guillotine but the prices of metal cutting ones were a bit steep and I was pondering getting an inexpensive paper/card one and seeing if it would stand up to cutting plastic. Then I thought about my Xuron rail cutters and found that they do the job beautifully, giving a very clean square cut in one action. I had tried the Xuron cutters on the stainless steel rail but decided that that was probably a step too far for them and I resorted to the vice and a junior hacksaw instead. I believe that Xuron have a no questions asked replacement policy in case of breakage but I doubt if Code 180 stainless steel rail was in their remit.

Jim.

 

[JimG]

Just a quick follow up to yesterday's message regarding the flux. I've just done a test with a drop of blue Fairy liquid in a small amount of the flux and it paints on the stainless steel rail very well with no tendency to ball. There seems to be no adverse effect on the action of the flux and I've been able to apply solder to the rail with no problems. My solder is normal 60/40 cored solder.

I'm also looking at only tinning the rail where I think I will need solder joints and once the tinning is done, further joints to the area can be done using normal solder and flux. I've tried a couple of tests and both worked well, so I'll probably tin each rail as I'm making the track, then join the tinned area on the rails to track busses with normal soldering when the track is laid.

Jim.

 

[martin_wynne]

Hi Jim,

Just to say that the latest Templot update now includes the ScaleOne32 standard on the quick gauge menu, labelled P-32:

http://templot.com/martweb/templot_upgrade.htm

regards,

Martin.

 

[JimG]

Hi Jim,

Just to say that the latest Templot update now includes the ScaleOne32 standard on the quick gauge menu, labelled P-32:

http://templot.com/martweb/templot_upgrade.htm

Martin,

I saw the mention in the Templot forum this morning and I'm just about to download the new version after lunch. In the meantime I've been using a custom gauge setting to design my ScaleOne32 trackwork and I'm hoping that this previous work will merge in with your new software version with no problems.

If you're looking for a suggestion for the next update, how about automatic interlacing of sleepers for turnouts - it might save me a lot of timber shoving.


Jim.

 

[Ian@StEnochs]

If you're looking for a suggestion for the next update, how about automatic interlacing of sleepers for turnouts - it might save me a lot of timber shoving.

Yes please. The Scottish companies all used interlaced sleepers and I need to get my next layout built.
Ian

 

[JimG]

While I'm messing about with building turnouts, I thought I would post up a plan of the station which was only shown in basic diagrammatic form in the full plan shown at the start of the thread.

http://www.westernthunder.co.uk/index.php?threads/a-venture-into-the-garden.4597/page-2#post-122496



It's based very loosely on Brechin station - well the passenger facilities are, with two platform roads and a central release road. That's about where the similarity ends. The goods facilities should have been at the top of the plan, but I wanted them close to the front edge of the boards for ease of shunting, so they were moved to the bottom of the plan and mirrored on reality. In the prototype, the goods shed would have been to the top right of the plan.

The station gives reasonable facilities with longer trains - up to five 45ft coaches - in the upper platform and shorter trains - maybe of four wheelers - in the lower platform. The short bay is there to cater for the horse boxes of the local gentry. The goods yard is not as large as I would like it but its size had to be constrained because of the restrictions imposed by the width of the baseboards. There are no loco facilities or carriage storage facilities on these baseboards, but I'm looking at providing something off the upper line from the station just off the top left of the plan.

The minimum radius is 10' 0" apart from one turnout in the goods yard which is 9' 6" radius. Most of the turnouts are 1:6.5 with 12' straight switches which are very similar to REA B6.5 turnouts. These give a fair compromise between appearance and compactness to fit in what is really a fairly restricted area in 1:32 scale. Maybe I should have looked at S scale in the garden - I think that would have been a first.

Jim.

 

[JimG]

I'm ploughing on with making my first turnout for the layout. I don't think I've ever spent days building a turnout - more like hours. But I have a few considerations. The turnouts are to be built with interlaced sleepers, which was the norm for the Caledonian and other Scottish pre-Grouping companies. The first consideration is that Cliff Barker's combined sleeper/chair components will need a fair bit of slicing and dicing to work in interlaced turnouts. But the most important consideration was how to deal with the crossing. Interlaced pointwork is very flexible - basically two independent tracks which, after leaving the switch heel, are tied together only at at the crossing nose with special chairs, etc. I had various thoughts about how I might make a strong enough crossing nose and wing rails with the track components available, but wasn't all that confident that I could make a strong enough unit. So I opted to make a brass plate base for the crossing nose and the wing rails. This would also provide a solution for the pointwork on the continuous tracks. I'm aiming to make these turnouts with swing noses to give universal running of all the G1 wheel standards and there would be a need for a substantial metal baseplate to support the swinging nose.

Getting details for a crossing baseplate is quite easy since it is possible to extract a DXF file from Templot for the crossing and use this to generate the necessary files for the CNC milling machine.


This is part way into the cut using 2.5mm brass plate. The distance between sleeper and underside of the rail is 1.5mm in Cliff Barker's track system, using his slide chair as a measure and the 2.5mm plate would give a slot depth of 1mm for the rails.


...and here's the completed base, with a basic error - see later.

The next thing was to consider how I was going to make the actual crossing nose. I could always use one of the many methods used in smaller scales but I had a hankering to actually try and make a proper splice in the nose. I could machine the rails in the mill to get the shapes required but first I had to make up a holder which would hold the rail bent to a certain angle such that when the sharp end of the nose was machined there was rail web right to the end.


Here's the jig for the crossing rail being machined from a bit of alloy plate...


...and the finished product.


The jig will be used with two toolmakers clamps...


...and here's the machining of the rail just starting with the rail clamped on the jig.


...and rail set up at the other end to cut the splice rail. Everything is handed in this operation and, yes, I've c*cked up on one occasion.


Here's a pretty dusty shot of the two parts of the crossing after machining.


I referred to an error machining the baseplate further up the thread and here's the explanation with the re-made baseplate. On interlaced pointwork the check and wing rails are offset to match the sleepers on both roads. In Templot it generated a crossing for standard timbering and I had just taken that data without it dawning on me at the time. So a new baseplate was machined to correct the problem - at the bottom.


I also took the opportunity to drill marker holes at the blunt nose and fine point positions to help with lining things up later on.

The undersides of the nose rails were tinned, as well as the rail positions on the baseplate.


Then the main rail was sweated onto the baseplate using the blunt nose hole to line it up - the main rail has the blunt nose machined on the mill.


...then the splice rail was fitted and sweated in and here's a better shot of the splice with not so much dust around. I am quite pleased with the result.

I'm now working on fitting the wing rails. It looked easy at first until I found that you need at least three hands to make sure everything is aligned properly and that heavy brass base holds a lot of its heat as well. So I've spent today making up a holder that will allow things to be clamped together before sweating. I hope to get the wing rails on tomorrow.

I'm looking ahead to having to build sixteen turnouts for the station layout and if I can set up processes on the mill and make jigs to put things together, then the operation on the remaining turnouts can become a bit of a sausage factory.

Jim

 

[Simon]

A well engineered and elegant solution, looking very nice. Sixteen sets of points - wow!

One question/thought, when I made my crossing noses, I had the rails inclined throughout, which made for some fiddly work with the files to get rails to fit like yours do (well, not as well, but good enough)

I think I read subsequently that the rail inclination was "put in" after the crossing nose. How do you intend to cope with this on your design?

I'm not trying to be tricksy or clever, more interested in what you have found out and how you will be doing it.

In the meanwhile I remain in awe at the amount and complexity of the S&C work you are planning

Great stuff!

Simon

 

[JimG]

Simon,

A well engineered and elegant solution, looking very nice. Sixteen sets of points - wow!

And there's another six on the ovals on the lawn - hence why I'm looking at a sausage factory operation. I'm hoping that I can complete a turnout in a day when I've got the process worked out although I shall probably do batch work for sets of crossing noses and point blades.

One question/thought, when I made my crossing noses, I had the rails inclined throughout, which made for some fiddly work with the files to get rails to fit like yours do (well, not as well, but good enough)

I think I read subsequently that the rail inclination was "put in" after the crossing nose. How do you intend to cope with this on your design?

I've always made my crossing noses with the rail square then twisted the rail after the crossing to match the normal rail inclination in the chairs. I do the twist over a few sleepers length so that the rail might not sit exactly in any chairs on these intervening sleepers.

I believe that's what happened on the prototype - at least with bullhead rail. I'm not sure if the same held for flat bottom rail - twisting that would be quite difficult compared to bullhead.

Jim.

 

[martin_wynne]

I've always made my crossing noses with the rail square then twisted the rail after the crossing to match the normal rail inclination in the chairs. I do the twist over a few sleepers length so that the rail might not sit exactly in any chairs on these intervening sleepers.

I believe that's what happened on the prototype - at least with bullhead rail. I'm not sure if the same held for flat bottom rail - twisting that would be quite difficult compared to bullhead.

Hi Jim,

Yes, bullhead and flat-bottom. On the prototype the twist is made between two adjacent chairs. It's a tricky twist to make because the running face has to be maintained in a straight line.

up to 1:5.75 between the B and C chairs
then up to 1:9 between the C and D chairs
then up to 1:13 between the D and E chairs
then up to 1:17 between the E and F chairs
then up to 1:20 between the F and G chairs

Re your problem with offset wing rail ends -- NER sleepered (interlaced) crossings have wing rail ends aligned. Here's a scan from the NERA book:



regards,

Martin.

 

[Dog Star]

A comment on interlacing of sleepers through a turnout; I have been making some GER permanent way for a S7 33+3 Challenge layout and the turnouts are based upon photographs of 19th century trackwork. Where the limits of the interlacing can be seen clearly then the GER had used sleepers between the switch heel and "one timber in front of the closure / crossing rail joints". For a turnout with 9'0" switches and 1:6 crossing angle then interlaced sleepers replaced twelve timbers. I stress that this modelling is based upon my interpretation of photographs, generally from the Woodward collection, taken across the GER system from inner suburban stations to junctions in far, remote, sleepy, Anglian hollows.

 

[JimG]

Re your problem with offset wing rail ends -- NER sleepered (interlaced) crossings have wing rail ends aligned. Here's a scan from the NERA book:

Martin,

Modellers of the Caledonian are extremely envious of NER modellers where track is concerned. There is an almost complete dearth of official information on Caledonian track and we tend to have to rely on what can be gleaned from the few records available, or on pictorial evidence. My source of information for the offset wing rail lengths was a PDF of a document of around 1900 which gave details of a crossover and the chairing of a "K" crossing.



The detail of the crossing nose in the centre gives lengths of the wing rails



...which shows one wing rail at 12ft long and one at 16ft, although I can't wuite understand the "About 4' 9"" lengths given to each wing from the blunt nose.

I had a good dig through all my Caledonian books to try and find evidence but almost every crossing that was close enough to examine had a loco or a piece of rolling stock on it. I found one picture in Jim MacIntosh's Livery book which looked as though it might have offset wing rail lengths


...but the more I look at it, the less I'm convinced.

In the same book there was another example...


...which seemed to be more convincing.

What really is interesting is a clip from George Washington Wilson's picture of Brechin station, which I'm basing the station on, where there appears to be wing rail combinations of both types within a few feet of each other.



The crossing nose on the right looks to have equal length wing rails while the one on the left has wing rails of different lengths.

However, one thing I did notice in my searches was that the Caledonian seemed to have a predilection for combined wing and check rails in point formations - like in the crossover in the drawing at the top of this message. So, since the turnout in question is one half of a crossover, I'll fit long wing+check rails between the turnouts on the crossover road. I'll now have a bit of a think about how I proceed - probably cut another brass base and transfer the nose rails to it.

I'll do a bit more exploration to see if I can find out more about the wing rails before I get to the pointwork where they may be used.

Jim.

PS. Just realised what the wing rail lengths might mean after I pressed the send button.

 

[Dog Star]

... My source of information for the offset wing rail lengths was a PDF of a document of around 1900 which gave details of a crossover and the chairing of a "K" crossing.

Jim,

From what you say and the appearance of your illustrations then I believe that the original source is the "Proceedings of the International Railway Congress, Paris, 1900... the section on Switc hes and Crossings". You are lucky to have some part of the document for there is no copy in the British Library... however, see the WT topic on "Old Permanent Way".

 

[Simon]

Are you sure that what that diagram actually shows is a case where the wing rail has been extended onwards to form the check rail for the other crossing in the pair? The fact that the diagram doesn't show the end of the supposedly extended wing rail makes me suspicious.

The pictures you show all look to have equal length wing rails as far as I can see....

Simon

 

[martin_wynne]

Hi Jim,

An interesting detail in your Caledonian drawing is that it shows the crossing flangeway at 1.7/8" instead of the usual 1.3/4".

Where a wing rail and check rail are combined, often in crossovers, it is usually called a "parallel-wing" crossing. There is a bit of an issue there -- wing rails are normally inclined at 1:20, whereas check rails on the better class of railway are always vertical (otherwise the checking face wears rapidly). So linking a wing rail to a check rail requires another twist.

regards,

Martin.

 

[JimG]

Over two weeks on and there's been a bit more work done on the turnout, but there's also been a lot of time lost while trying to find an adhesive to stick the sleepers to the styrene battens. The Evostik Pipe Weld didn't stand up to handling when pushing rail through chairs on sleepers already glued down. So I investigated Acetone and DiChloroMethane (Plastic Weld) and they didn't work either. At one point I tried to stick two sleepers together and couldn't manage that. So I looked elsewhere - away from solvents - and tried some No Nonsense superglue from Screwfix and that seems to be working. It doesn't bond instantly, but takes a few seconds so that suits me since it gives a small amount of wriggle room to adjust sleeper positions especially when I have to slide the sleepers into position.

I've also been working out how I can use the sleepers with their integral chairs to make the interlaced turnouts. I am obviously going to have to carve the chairs about a bit to deal with check rails, switch heels and crossings. I tried carving the chairs by hand but it was quite difficult to work with the plastic used and get good results. So I turned to the mill again.



I made up a jig to hold the sleeper unit to allow the chair parts to be machined.



In this picture, the inside of the chair is being machined to make clearance for the chair on another rail - like a check rail or the heel of a switch rail.



At the other end, I can machine a chair completely off the sleeper...



...to allow the sleeper to go under my built up crossings or to allow the fitting of slide chairs under switch blades.



I also added a section to the jig to allow the neatening up of the check rail chairs. I use the supplied Cliff Barker check rail chairs and cit them in half with a razor saw, then fit them on the jig and machine the cut edge to be square and give the correct check rail gap when married up to the machined chair on the sleeper. The sleeper plastic doesn't machine cleanly, coming off like soft fluff and balling up at the end of a cut requiring a fair bit of cleaning off after the milling is completed.

With the sleepers machined I started work on the crossing.



The sleepers under one road of the crossing were laid first. This is the first run using the Evostik Pipe Weld.



The crossing was offered up to the sleepers.



Countersunk holes had been drilled at each end of the crossing to take self tapping screws...



...and the sleeper under the holes had additional material inserted in the underside (ex spacing bar cut from the sleepers earlier) to give a bit more depth of material for the screw...



...and the small self-tapping screw was inserted.

I also turned my attention to switch blades. It's one job I don't like when making pointwork - filing point blades. A feature of my trackwork when being built is the lack of point blades until I grit my teeth and make them all in one great operation.



So another jig appeared on the mill. The jig holds the rail, clamped by the toolmaker's clamps and both sides of the blade are machined - the farther side having only the taper on the top of the rail machined and the side facing out having the whole side of the rail machined. The full machining only goes into half the thickness of the track so that half the web is still there at the very end of the blade to give reasonable strength. The machining on the inner side of the rail head only goes in as far as the web to leave the half width web. To finish off the blade, the top of the inner side requires a bit of filling to sharpen up the point and I like to finish of that bit of filing when the blade is fitted to get the best shaping.



Part way into the operation, the taper on the inner side of the rail has been done and the work on the main mating surface has just started.



...and a bit later on the taper milling is about 2/3 done .



The final result with five pairs of blades to use on the main five turnouts in the station throat. They still need the clamping pieces cut off, but most of the hard work has been done.

I'm also having second thoughts about using the stainless steel rail - certainly for pointwork. It is quite hard and I suspect that it work hardens when being milled. I also found that it goes glass hard when heated. I used my RSU to re-build the crossing nose and my Graskop was on maximum setting to get the heat into the big lump of stainless steel and brass and the carbon top was red hot in contact with the rail. After soldering I wanted to run a file across the nose to clean it up a bit and an almost brand new Nicholson file would hardly touch it. I'm thinking of using the rail offcuts to make form tools. And I think I will change to nickel silver rail for the pointwork and use the stainless steel rail for plain track.

Jim.

 

[Dikitriki]

Jim,

As ever, great use of jigs and machine tools. Very useful information too, especially about the use of stainles steel versus nickel silver for pointwork and the (non) use of conventional glues.

Richard

 

[Simon]

I didn't have any problem in soldering up my crossing noses in stainless, although I didn't have Jim's machined but heat sinking machined bases to cope with - one up for the bodgers amongst us

Just another thought for you Jim, the chairs on the sleepers have twice the rail inclination that they ought to, whilst the separate chair castings are correct. But back to my bodging theme, it's probably OK as the correct ones were designed for code 200 so don't grip the code 180 properly!!

Great work, please keep it up, we need more ScaleOne32 tracks

Simon

 

[JimG]

As ever, great use of jigs and machine tools. Very useful information too, especially about the use of stainles steel versus nickel silver for pointwork and the (non) use of conventional glues.

Richard,

I'm only going to this length with the jigs, etc., since I know I've got sixteen turnouts to build over winter and I want to streamline the process as much as possible. Building interlaced turnouts with the composite sleeper/chair units has brought up quite a few problems, some of which I had had foreseen, and some I hadn't.

Simon,

I didn't have any problem in soldering up my crossing noses in stainless, although I didn't have Jim's machined but heat sinking machined bases to cope with - one up for the bodgers amongst us

It was one of my fellow club members who suggested the RSU for the job instead of my 100W Weller. It did do the job albeit hardening the stainless steel, but the red hot carbon bit actually broke when I was applying pressure in its red hot state and there was quite a dance as I batted the bit off my jeans to finish up on the carpet, which has now got a nice deep burn mark. But I also found out that my blowlamp also does a good job on the crossing and doesn't get anywhere near red heat either.

Just another thought for you Jim, the chairs on the sleepers have twice the rail inclination that they ought to, whilst the separate chair castings are correct. But back to my bodging theme, it's probably OK as the correct ones were designed for code 200 so don't grip the code 180 properly!!

TimC passed on your information about the chair inclination and that explains something I had noticed and hadn't fully investigated. I had formed the crossing nose with the rails vertical then put a twist on the outer ends to match up with the sleeper chair inclination. but when I fitted the crossing to the sleepers, it looked as though I hadn't put enough twist on the rails. Is Cliff ever going to correct the problem? I believe Len Newman did the moulds and I'm surprised he made that error since he's done a lot of moulds for other plastic chair systems and they're all fine.

Unfortunately his individual chairs don't match the GE ones on his Code 180 sleeper units and they do show up when mixing them in an interlaced turnout. I'm trying to wangle the GE chairs on the outside of the rails as far as possible and keep the individual chairs, or bits of them, in the four foot to try and make the differences less obvious. I wonder if Cliff will do an individual chair to the GE pattern?

Jim.