I read that in one of the posts. If it is true then making your own turnouts could add a lot of versatility in yard design–and save space. You could run the types of crossovers and crossing that are more prototypical than having to rely on commercial offerings. You could create the ultimate yard.
If it were only true.
Hand-laid turnouts are easy and cost next to nothing.
What they cost is time. Time to learn about the geometry. Time to learn and practice the skills. Time to actually build them. Time to wire them.
A piece of rail, if bought in 99 ft bundles costs about 50 cents a 3 ft stick. You need about 1 piece per switch. Ties cost you a buck or two. Throw in a about a buck’s worth of spikes and other hardware. Total cost $3-4 per switch. It will take you anywhere from 30 min to 2 hours to build a switch.
The catch is, that the results are only as good as your craftsmanship and the care and precision you put into it. Build a sloppy switch and you’ll get sloppy operation. Build a switch carefully and you’ll have excellent custom trackwork.
Dave H.
I’ll second the above. I’ve got a 2 level RR that’s almost all yard and as a consequence has 225 switches. I only hand built one and it because it was a special application (extra long on a curve with a movable frog) that wasn’t available commercially. If I’d tried to hand lay all of them I’d have thrown in the towel and taken up needlepoint years ago!
225 switches!
Let’s see 225 switches ( x dollars per + tortoise + Mom) carry the wiring that make–
uh, xcuse me Mr. Rockerfeller, I’ll be minding my own business now.
DANG!
Spacemouse,
As a kid, I’d look at track plans and count the number of turnouts in them and multiply by $10.
As an adult, I look at track plans and count the number of turnouts in them and multiply by $20 or whatever they now cost.
Never mind switch machines, etc.
I’ve made one handlaid turnout, and it was pretty successful.
For some inspiration, check out www.handlaidtrack.com and look at the slideshow a few inches down on the left hand side of the page.
Those are the most realistic looking turnouts I’ve seen.
At the N scale club in Balboa Park in San Diego, they handlay all their track on code 40 rail. www.sdsons.org and on their page they talk about it a bit.
I’m pretty committed to handlaid track. Turnouts are just too expensive.
Mouse:
Hand made switches is aggravation I don’t think you need or want right now. It is an art form unto it’self - well as a lot of work.
Maybe in the future - like your 33rd layout.
this kalmbach publication has a step by step plan for doing hand layed turnouts chuck
Always the teeter-totter.
One side you got work…
…x…
…The other side you got money
Thanks Chuck. I have that book. It always looks easy in the books.
Chip,
I would agree with Don on this one…They do take a lot of time to get through the learning curve. There is a joke among my train buddies about the progression of track work: People start with snap track, then flextrack, then handlaid, back to flextrack.
To get an idea of what it is like to handlay, buy a railway engineering prebuilt turnout that you lay on ties that you glue down…These can take a while as well…
Chip… It is true , Roll up your sleeves and give it a try, your first will take several hours to complete, once you are comfortable with your skill you can assemble them en masses. The beauty is you can lay track as YOU want it, not possible with prefab. You would be able to use small code rail and select the tie spacing as a railroad such as yours would have used.
Turnouts could be assembled and tested on the bench and then installed at the proper location either in groups or single units , ditto for any special trackwork. I begin my turnout construction starting from the center of a 3ft length of code 83 rail, this way I avoid troublesom rail joiners near the frog and points.
Dave
[2c][2c][2c][2c]
Does anyone make or has anyone built a jig for making turnouts?
I linked to some jigs above at www.handlaidtrack.com
Some prefer to build them in place, some prefer jigs. With jigs, all of your turnouts end up the same, which you may or may not prefer.
Or you could make your own templates for any turnout situation,
Here’s how:
Foot long piece of flextrack, pin it in place at the top and bottom with some bank pins, lay it out for the straight route, place tracing paper that has also been pinned on top to lay on top of the flex track, rub to get an outline of the rails using a crayola or dark pencil.
Remove just the top pin in the flex track and without distrubing your paper (You should be able to fold it out of the way) adjust the flex track for the diverging route, re-pin, place your tracing paper back over the flex track, without moving paper and repeat above steps.
Carefully remove the paper, you should have a clear concise template, nows its back to the workbench to work out tie spacing and the usual sundries.
Track work and lineside detail is good but for an amazing book on track works check out Carstens publications, Trackwork handbook for the modelrailroader (Or some thing to that effect). Walther’s carries it but they are about the only one. it is an amazing book and really goes into detail. If you can read it through you’ll understand how to lay track and how it works in real life. Simply amazing. Check it out.
Jesse
Been there, done that! At one time, I had about 70 feet of hand laid code 70 track and around 25 hand laid switches. I made a bunch of 1800’s stub end switches, hand built the frogs and everything. On most of them I used the prebuilt frogs and just made the other parts of them. Time consuming… Yep!!! Fun? Yeh, if you like spending a lot of time doing tedious work. Try handlaying some track first, see if you like doing that (I got so I could do about 3 feet in an evening…) A better idea might be to follow Don’s advise and get your first layout built and running well. (Then… GO FOR IT!!! Yeah!)
By the way most of the handlaid stuff got torn out a couple of years ago and replaced with code 83 (as did the old code 100 stuff). I left the stub end switches in the logging empire and a few odds and ends of the code 70 rail in a few appropriate places, but the decision to go with DCC meant that the yard switches would be a pain and over time (20 years) the old Walther’s Goo that they were put down with has gone out of guage and it was going to be too hard to get it to work well. Still… It is a great lot of fun to sometimes have that old steamer going down the track to made with your bare hands.
I’ve built slipswitches, if I need a slipswitch, I will build it.
If a #4 turnout is available, I will buy it.
I’ve done the handlaid stuff and my decision is about detail. A good switch with the right detail will look better than my handlaid one.
But I have gone as far as finding individual tie plates for HO…naah…wont go that far.
But I will have plenty of special work on my new layout as I will be building certain rail scenes closely accurate as possible.
Theres no way you can build a North Shore Milwaukee Terminal with commercial track.
You have to build the trackage.
And thats what I will be doing.
Easy is a relative term. It seems like there are two ends of the spectrum. To some people they are easy and these folks can crank out a wonderful turnout in 30 minutes. Other people work at them for 4-8 hours and they still come out like junk. I really hate reparing those built by other people.
Most hand built turnouts have a hot frog, be prepared for the extra gaps and wiring needed. Also don’t forget to allow for expansion and put sytrene in the gaps to keep them from closing together.
We’ve also got a problem of the rail working loose from the ties over the years. After a while you have to really replace the ties just like the real railroad. If I were to do it again I wouldn’t only glue the ties to the roadbed but also the rail to the ties. Use spikes just to get the gauge right initally and for looks.
The biggest problem I have with some turnouts built, ummm about 20 years ago, is that the homosote or upson board they were built on is wearing under the throw bar. Sort of like dust bunnies that make them jam and not throw smoothly. Attempts to clear it out or cut a deeper grove under them usually makes them jam vertically. If I can’t clear it with high pressure air, the whole thing gets replaced. If I were to do it again I would make certain I put a sheet of something harder (brass, aluminum, plastic) under the throw bar to hopefully eliminate this problem.
I hope this doesn’t open a can of worms, but i read an article by Stephen Hatch about the NMRA guage being too wide on the track standard. I used a digital caliper to check and yes the track check’s minimum is almost dead on what the track should be(4’8.5"). The maximum is 2" wider. The flangeways guage on the other end is the correct track guage as he points out. This has made a big difference in the performance of my handlaid turnouts. Has anyone else heard of this and had similar experience?
Chip, as far as a jig, the only thing I’ve ever worked with is one to build the frog. This was a presentation by an experienced modeller given back in the early '70’s. You even built the jig. He gave instructions on how to calculate and draw out the dimensions for each frog number. Not sure if I still have them, it’s been YEARS since I’ve don them.
In this case, as stated above, it’s not just a question of time vs. money. If the skill isn’t there, the amount of time you spend will be wasted. This is truly a craftsman type endeavor.