By Jove, I think he's got it!

Still working (midnight Eastern) but at least it’s from home this time, so while waiting on others I decided to try another set of frog points with my Fast Tracks tooling. My very first attempt didn;t turn out so good. So I reviewed the video (and cheated - tonight I picked up another 12" mill file, but a better name brand one instea dof the no-name one I used the first time). Second try - better, but had that weak and crushed top edge which if used would have resulted in a bump. Third try - NOW I got it. They look pretty much exactly like the demo ones in the video. One thing I did differently the third time was for the final pass I used a finer cut file to make the final surface smoother. They fit together beautifully in the jig. Now I just need to fire up my sodlerign station and get them soldered together. And order some more Atlas Code 83 flex track to strip for rail. But hey, progress! And maybe THIS weekend I finally won’t have to work through the whole thing so I can get a little hobby time in.

–Randy

Congrats, Randy!

Again, it turns out to be true that having proper tools is the job half-done already!

Randy,

Welcome to the FastTracks club.

I too had a problem with the frog on my first attempt. I just unsoldered it, cleaned it up and resoldered it.

Stripping flex track to get rail goes against my miser’s grain. Go back on the web site and buy bulk rail. Also there are a lot of other goodies there now, ties, rail, flux, solder, etc. I just got a nice little box full and am good to go.

Well, if anyone had Atlas rail in bulk… I had my fixtures made to fit Atlas code 83 instead of Micro Engineering, so I can take advantage of the various Atlas pieces when needed, and use a flex track that naturally forms smooth curves for the bulk of my track. ME flex might have better details, but I’ve had excellent luck with Atlas track, and once painted and ballasted you can’t really tell - definitely not at normal viewing distances.

–Randy