Fast Tracks tells me they shipped my order for a #8 crossover and a #6 turnout jig. What sold me is they were able to make me a set of jigs that use atlas code 83 rail instead of ME which is not only in short supply but also more expensive. And I have about 400’ of Atlas Flex that I really had no desire to walk away from.
I look forward to building my first turnout.
BTW, it was the discussions of this product on this board that induced me to give it a try. We’ll see if you guys were right, that one can build a turnout in an hour!
Well,…let’s be more honest and say that your first will take closer to two, and then you will get faster. My guess is that your fifth will take nearer 90 minutes cumulative since the turnout isn’t finished until it has the ties added and the entire turnout weathered per the instruction. Missing the weathering would reduce that by perhaps 8 minutes if we include the drying time.
You won’t be rushing these, nor watching the clock anyway. They’re too much darned fun!
Edit- forgot about the crossover. Add maybe 40 minutes to the first estimate, then cut 20.
About an hour is a good estimate. Depends on how much fiddling is needed to get things right.
But that is for a raw turnout, no ties yet.
Some parts of the process are quite slow, like cutting gaps and filing the points and frog rails. Takes a bit of time to get that right. I got a big mill bastard file, that will take off material fast, and then finish it with a finer cut mill file. That speeds up the process a bit. And a benchtop sander helps with grinding the rails where the points meet.
But it is a nice way to kill an hour. Sure beats watching TV or surfing the net sometimes.
About the Jigs, why couldn’t you use atlas Code 83 on a regular jig? Obviously I know that you can build a code 83 turnout on a code 70 jig, but either way you’d be using code 83 rail. Weird. [xx(]
Funny, but when I pulled up your post to quote it, that (illegitimate offspring) word appeared between the quote blocks.
I avoid the problem by using a 10 inch first-cut mill file, which can create a frog point in, literally, seconds, or a point rail in about 2 minutes. (My points are undercut to ride up on the base of the un-notched stock rails.)
If I exclude tie cutting and laying, and the final details of spiking every tie and connecting a throw mechanism, just getting rails cut, down and soldered (with enough spikes to hold them in place and in gauge) takes just about an hour of working time, so it appears that we are all in the same ballpark. Of course, I provide for gaps before installing rails, use a solid frog and my open point is as (electrically) dead as the dinosaurs.
Depends on the width of the rail, as the jig is milled to accept an hold certain widths. I’ve been told that the ME code 83 jigs will also work with code 70 rail.
Atlas’ rail profile may not be the same as ME, and/or have the same tolerances either. The reason they recommend ME railstock is that it is dimensionally pretty tight. So you won’t get problems with a too loose or tight fit in the jig throwing off other dimensions.
Sure it takes an hour, but for the investment in time, you get a switch that beats anything you can get commercially. Sure, some of the mass produced switches you can buy are pretty good, and can be tweaked, but how much time will that take?
Atlas code 83 has a wider base than the ME, the difference being so large that it is a pain in the neck for me to join them. Peco & ME rail are generally compatible, while Atlas is not.
The value of the jig, it seems to me is in its ability to accurately position the rails before soldering. My jigs should be too loose for ME rail while Atlas rail should not fit into ME jigs.
Building the skeleton you’ll quickly get in under an hour. The ties are the ‘fun’ part. I’m working on mass producing them to speed that up. I use the leftovers from the quicksticks that came with the kit to get the tie spacing, though I’m tempted to build right on a template and just glue the whole thing down. I have yet to be really satisfied with the connection of the wood ties to the rails, but the more I think about it the less important I think it might be. If the wood ties are glued to the roadbed, and the rails are joined to the other track, nothing is going anywhere. the turnout is floating, but that’s often done on purpose. Hmm…