Do you fill your frog with solder and then cut a flangeway with hacksaw blade?
If so, how do you measure and get the piece of brass or copper under the rails so you can dump solder on it? You would have to spike track, then measure, insert the brass under the rails, then respike?
I solder the two rails together after filing them to my frog # or angle. My flange way is formed from the end of each closure rail. On code 83 or smaller my points closure rail and frog outside flangeways are all one piece of track (one curved, the other straight. On some TO’s I use a PCB tie under the frog area to solder everything down to. I made a fixture/jig for #4 & 6 TO’s that fits over the rails and spaces the flangeway and guages the track in the frog area. This jig is made from a piece of printed circuit board and scraps of rail soldered to it.
I don’t use the brass filler. I’ve built turnouts in codes 55, 70 and 83 in HO, HOn3 and Sn3 with the rails through the frogs only. Spike the rails down on the ties, check everything with the NMRA gauge, then solder away. There should be more than enough surface tension in the solder to prevent it from flowing out of the flangeways. I’ve built literally hundreds of turnouts on my and my friends’ layouts and haven’t found the extra brass/copper pieces to be of any real value. Note that I’m building most of these in place on the layout, but I’ve also built some off the layout using homemade jigs and still used the same methods. I’ve also taken to soldering the flangeways through the guard rails, which helps create a more solid assembly that can be fine tuned as if it was one piece.
Tweet,
Thanks.
Rob,
I’m modeling O scale, which has more space than what you’ve been doing. Do you think your method would work w/mine?
Place two pieces of rail side by side and insert the NMRA gauge flangeway prong to get a measurement of your rail spacing. How much of a gap do you see between the bases of the rails? If it’s around 1/16" or so you should be fine. Try putting a few ties on a scrap of roadbed, spike two guardrail sized pieces of rail in place, then fill the flangeway with solder. If the solder flows through, you could try inserting some brass strip that rests on top of the rail bases to hold solder in place. That sounds a lot easier than cramming strips under the rails, and won’t potentially create a hump in the rails through the frog or guardrail.
It’s been a while since I’ve built a switch, but I have jigs for holding the frog upside down while I solder the pieces together. It’s a technique that dates back to the '50’s or earlier. I learned it from an old guy MANY years ago.
Dave, I wouldn’t mess with filling them in, because of the variation in flange depth of our wheels. Just make sure there is enough room for the wheel thickness and flange depth, and that you have the proper alignment of the closure rails for smooth operation. That’s what counts.
Remember that HO has a special NMRA gauge for all of the critical dimensions on switches. We as 3 railers don’t have that tool, even though the NMRA has “Hirail” standards published for us. I’m not sure that all of our manufacturers comply.