[jesse's diets] This week, I 'ave been mostly swearing [/jesse's diets]
Well, swearing, grumbling, using the scrap bin and generally getting annoyed anyway
. Partly as a bit of practise for when I get round to building something in S, but mainly for a future project, I thought it was time to try and build some pointwork and learn how to make all of the relevant components (switch blades, vee's, wing rails etc). Previous efforts have been limited to using pre-made crossings and switch rails - they turned out OK apart from the tiebars which I just couldn't get right. In the end they were sold as works in progress and I've concentrated on building things that don't need turnouts
The pair of b*ggers which have caused me grief this week are a B6 curved RH turnout and a Y turnout with effectively a B6 LH road and a B8 RH road, both of them to EM standards.
Possibly not the most sensible of things to start with as neither have a straight stock rail, they've provided an 'interesting' challenge and proved that I need a lot more practise! Being EM and constructed on copper clad sleepers, they have been quite forgiving of lots of adjustments and tweaking which plastic chaired / wooden sleepered track would be less tolerant of.
I still struggled like hell to get the tie bars right (using copper clad strip), so following some advice from JimG, the lower turnout in the photo has had 0.9mm wire soldered to the switch rails (pointing downwards) ready to go into a tie bar below the baseboard. Cosmetic tiebars fromC&L have also been soldered between the switch rails. The curved turnout is waiting for the same treatment, I just want to make a jig using the first turnout to try and keep everything the same and hopefully avoiding the need to make the under baseboard tiebars specific to each unit.
A day off tomorrow to talk and play with big trains, then back to it on Sunday - hopefully I can finish turnout 2, get the filler applied where the sleepers have been gapped and drop them in primer, steel rail rusts like a good'un with Carr's Green label flux!