How do you install the tracks in a roundhouse? I have a Walther’s modern roundhouse and all that is left is some weathering, some lights and of course, the tracks. But how do you out them in? I mean how do I make sure that they remain in gauge and how do I best attach them? Can I just lay the track as normal. Please any suggestions welcome.
Magnus
Magnus, I simply cut the required length of flextrack and ran the track, minus ties, up onto the lip of the turntable pit. I then fixed those pit ends of the bay tracks with plaster of paris and made a pad of sorts, coloured to look like dirty, oily concrete. Staying in gauge was no problem because the rest of the ties were in place all the way back to the stop at the end of each bay.
Does your roundhouse require you to set and glue lengths of rail into grooves in each bay?
In the image below, note the concret apron, or pad, near the edge of the pit and extending toward the bay doors. Because I was using Code 100 rail, I had to file the lip with a grinding disk so that those rails would meet level with the less tall Code 83 rails that Walthers provides on the bridge. The Code 100 rails, minus ties, lie in the grooves I cut. Works well. Don’t be afraid to bring the rails from the bays right to the very edge so that there is only a 2mm gap. Also, don’t forget to bevel the inner flange face of all the bay rails! Very important for slight misalignments.
-Crandell
I’ve glued the rails to the roundhouse kit with AC.
Wolfgang
I had been thinking about using the same method as you described Selector so I will do so. That way I can wait installing them until they are on the board as well. Thanks as always for both of your help.
Magnus
I had an Atlas roundhouse on my last layout, not sure if it’s the same as the Walthers one. Anyway the Atlas one has ‘troughs’ where the tracks can run. I used Atlas code 83 straight sectional track from the edge of the turntable to the end of the ‘trough’, then used a wide flat piece of balsa between the rails and smaller pieces of stripwood on the outside of the rails. Once painted the same color as the concrete floor, with a few cracks etc. and weathered, it looked pretty good I thought.
My Walthers roundhouse has pits between the rails and groves for the rails to set in. I glued in pieces of rail before building anything else. The old method of coating the rail base with rubber cement, allowing it to dry, placing the rail and heating with a solder iron to make the cement sticky again worked well. Be very careful to keep all in guage and don’t melt the plastic.
If your roundhouse is already fully assembled, you may have to make some special soldering iron tips from 8 or 10 gauge copper wire. Your tips can be long and curvy enough to reach around detail and still soften cement although they may not carry enough heat to melt solder.
My rails were cut as long as the grove they would fit in plus 1/2 inch for a rail joiner. I added the sections from roundhouse to pit edge after the completed house was installed on the layout.
The house tracks end a prototypical distance from the back wall. On the prototype, this space was needed to work on the firebox and as a thoroughfare. But on the model, it allows a careless operator to run the pilot truck off the rails. It doesn’t always return to the rails when the loco is backed out and can jam in the doorframe.
Next time, I’d run the rails right to the back wall as insurance and depend on operators to stop in the prototypical position.