Lets assume that I have a completed, Fast Tracks, turnout on the bench. The wood ties are bare wood and glued in place. Can I spray the entire turnout with a single color? Then wipe the tops of the rail heads? What would I do as the next steps to finish them off?
You can, but one thing to be aware of is you’ll need to clear paint from any contact points as well.
I think the Fast track instructional videos show a color like Grimy Black.
Nice thing about a proper Fast Tracks turnout - there are no contact points to worry about. All power paths are through soldered connections or fed with a wire (the frog), so point on the point blades does not matter.
–Randy
You can paint the entire turnout without any regard to keeping the points free of paint. Electrical connections are made by soldering the rails to PC Board ties with a copper plating. The points do not have to make electrical contact with the stock rails as in some other turnouts.
However, soon after painting it is advisable to move the points back and forth and to then clean the top of the rails. I’ve used flat black and it looks excellent to me.
Wayne
Just finished a schwack of FT turnouts last winter. Painted them all Railroad Tie Brown and wiped the rail heads clean when the paint was soft. I did have a couple turnouts that got sticky between the points and the headblock ties, but that was easily cleaned up after the paint dried.
Dwayne A
Is there anything wrong with airbrushing solvent type paints on the fast track turnouts?
No, not at all. You can paint the ties and all of the rails with solvent type paints, I’ve done exactly that on four of these turnouts. Immediately after the paint was applied the top of the rails were wiped clean with a small piece of wood and the points were moved back and forth a few times so they wouldn’t get stuck. You can go ahead and paint the entire turnout, ties and rail, without having to be concerned about disrupting any electrical connections.
Since the frogs on these turnouts are isolated you may want to consider adding a wire to the frog before painting. This wire would then be placed through a hole below the turnout in the event you ever wanted to power the frog. I do have one 0-4-0 that stalls on these isolated frogs and I have plans to power the frogs in the immediate future.
Wayne
I am not sure if Floquil still sells the track paint pens, but they worked out really well for me in the past. They come in 3 colors if I recall correctly, one for ties, and 2 other colors for rail. They have the fat felt tip and are the type that you depress as you are using.
They do, I am using them to paint my track. Much less tedious than using a brush and bottle of paint. I do the rust then when that dries go over it with the grimy black. SO far not having much trouble with gaps left aroudn the spiek details, I pick a stretch and run down each side of the rail in both directions for full coverage. I do the back side, against the wall, even though you normally can;t see it, because if I put the camera ont he tracks to ttake a picture - you WILL see it.
However, with something like Fast Tracks turnouts built at the bench, I’d just spray them, SO much easier. Not somethign I’d do to track on the layout, there’s just no way to get proper ventilation and even with Polly Scale water-based paints, you don;t want to be breathing that stuff. Outdoors, or in a spray booth - and you can’t stuff the entire layout in a spray booth, unless you are building a small scale micro layout.
–Randy