I was reading a copy of “How to Build Realistic Track” and came across John Pryke’s article on mass-producing turnouts. However, his description leaves a bit to be desired. I have two main questions about this process:
How do you go about bending the rails? Your fingers, and keep tweaking until you hope it lines up with the blueprint?
Is there a better way to create the frog besides his method of “file the rails down until it’s somehow right?”
I’d like to try building some switches while I’m on break this winter, but don’t want to spend a fortune on Fast Tracks when I can’t even justify buying a handful of decoders. Hopefully somebody out there read the same article and can give me some help. Thanks in advance.
To be honest, I haven’t read How to Build Realistic Track as such, having long since read the articles which are probably its basis. Nor do I mass-produce turnouts. I hand-lay turnouts (and more complex specialwork) in place on my layout.
As for your questions:
Rail is bent, gently, with the fingers, possibly in conjunction with a couple of vise dogs on the workbench. If you work down to the desired radius gradually you can avoid kinks.
In 55 years of hand-laying, I’ve never found a ‘better frog.’ I have seen other modelers build up frogs from blobs of solder (further comments deleted.) My own have always been filed from raw rail. Some currently in service on my layout have given me trouble-free operation for 29 years.
While the Fast Tracks jigs are solidly engineered and give good results it is entirely possible to build top-quality turnouts without them. My entire toolbox consists of a BIG flat file (from a Home Cheapo file set,) rail cutters (diagonal-cutting pliers with the faces of the jaws filed flat,) spiking pliers (long-nose, garage sale refugees with slots filed in the tips to hold spikes,) a heavyweight soldering gun (325 watt Weller old enough to run for president) an NMRA gauge (HO standard gauge, appropriate for 1:80 scale HOj) and two three point gauges. I also use a power drill to sink holes for my feeder wires and point linkages - the same one that I use, with a cross-point bit, to assemble my steel stud benchwork.
Hand-laying specialwork, whether in place or on ready-to-install pieces of roadbed, is not sub-nuclear particle physics. Just be patient with yourself and don’t be disapointed if the first few attempts fall short of perfection. If this arthritic old coot can do it, so can just about anybody.
Chuck, thanks for replying and for the advice. I realized I phrased my second question incorrectly. It’s not so much a “better” way I’m looking for as “more accurate.” Namely, to avoid going “too wide…too wide… crap! too narrow!” over and over.
I am just starting to get into handlaid track. I too have been looking at the Fast Tracks products. The jigs are great and I agree that the cost is high if you do not have a lot of turnouts. One option would be to buy the fixture(s) you need with a friend and share them, or have a set purchased by a club for use by the club and its members. This would allow more and more turnouts to be built and bring the over all cost of each turnout down even more.
If these are not a option you could do what I am planning to do and use their Twist Ties turnouts. I started with one of the kits to get the basics of what I need and now just need more Twist Ties and rail. Here is a link to a thread I started. http://www.handlaidtrack.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1050 One of the advantages to these is that you can make curved turnouts at very custom radii and I have seen these tie kits used to make custom crossovers.
If you get any of the Fast Tracks tools get the point form tool, the frog jig, and the stock aid. One note thought about these products is that at least all of the HO items are made for the Micro Engineering rail.
Please post some pcitures of the various handlayed and specialty trackwork you’ve built to give us an idea of what can be done. Some pics of the tools you use would be helpful too. A picture can worth a thousand words.
I rarely “bend’ the rails, that is permanently deform them. Just like a piece of flex track will bend around a curve a piece of rail will bend and be held in place by spikes or solder. about the only place I have permanently “bent” the rail is in a couple of essentially #4 switches that fit into a 19” radius wye. Most of the time I just push the rail over to where it belongs and spike it.
Instead of a Fastracks jig, I bought a vertical belt sander, one of those with a 1" wide belt, and I use it for grinding points and frogs. I took a piece of 1/8" masonite and cut a notch in it to fit around the belt, then used double sided tape to hold it on the table so the edge of the notch is right up next to the belt to give me more support when sanding/filing rails. Makes very short work of shaping points and frogs.
I don’t worry about getting a precise, specific angle in the frog rails, I fill the point of the frog with solder so I file a shallow angle and then position them at whatever frog number I want. I normally build my frogs and points on the workbench and then assemble a switch in place. Makes it very easy to get consistent frogs with minimal expense. My frog “jigs” cost me about a quarter. Its a small piece of Homasote with two short rails spiked to it, one jig for #5 frogs, one for #6 frogs.
If you look at most handlaid switches, there is an insulating gap cut between the frog and the points. I figure that if there is going to be a break in the rail there, use it. I build the frog as one piece, from the frog to the gap and the point as one piece from the gap to th
First, thanks for reading Realistic Reliable Track.
It’s really not hard to bend rail with your fingers for gentle curves, and for sharp bends as for wing rails at the frog you can use flat-nose pliers. Your initial bend for a gentle curve only has to be close, not necessarily exact, as you can adjust it when you fasten the rail, whether with spikes or by soldering to PC ties.
It’s also not difficult to just file and fit two rails to make a frog. When the rails fit together at the angle of the template, you’re there. If you file off a little too much, no problem, because you’re going to solder the rails together anyway, and in John Pryke’s method, they’ll also be soldered to the frog plate.
This is work that only looks hard until you’ve done it, so my advice is to give it a try.
Back in my college days, I used an MR article to make several hand-layed switches. Even got bold enough to make a 3-way. Never had any derailments at those switches, or the hand-layed straight and curved track, although I couldn’t say the same about the commercial switches and track I bought. And that was before PC ties. In fact, the only problem I had was I never caught on to the proper way to place electrical gaps for the 3-way. After the first switch was de-bugged, the rest were pretty easy and straught forward. If I were to do it today, I’d probably get some of the Fast Track forming tools, but maybe not the templates. Budget restrictions.
Many thanks to everyone who replied. Dave, thanks for the pictures- they really helped with your great description. Are the outside rails on your jigs so that you can line up the frog with an NMRA gauge? (And thanks to Sperando, for dropping in my thread. [:)] )
Lets go easy on the disparaging remarks about “Arthritic old coots”. You see, I resemble that remark. The arthritic, not the old. At seventy years old, I can still pick out a pretty girl in a crowd. My problem is, I can’t remember why.??? [%-)][(-D]
