Making Gauge ‘3’ Track...
This is possibly the most; boring, tedious, time consuming, and deathly dull thing to do. BUT if you want to make your own track -this is how I do it. The instructions come from the Henry Greenly Book "Model Railways" -I have the 1924 edition. The Gauge ‘3’ Society has provided the raw materials -in the form of: brass rail, white metal chairs and brass track pins, Brandbright have supplied the sleepers...
Going on the information gleaned from the text shows that the sleepers used in the 1920's were longer and thicker than the ones supplied by Brandbright -but not quite to scale and far more rough and ready. The Brandbright sleepers come pre-treated with a spirit based dark oak wood stain and preserver
This is the result of reading the books -I call it "The Track Making Xylophone". This a length of MDF with 7mm strips very carefully epoxied into position. The gauge for the track (63.5mm) is produced by upright 3mm bolts. The spread gauge for corners (64.5mm) is produced by sliding brass tubes over the upright screws.
The dark oak sleepers are then dropped into the slots. Some constructional difficulties and "words" were uttered to get the 7mm sq sections to glue absolutely square -I had to regularly scrape the glue oozing from the joint until it set.
The white metal "chairs", for the "bullhead rail" to slide into, are then positioned on the sleepers -and CA'ed into position. They are not symmetrical -but have a inwards facing 20deg slope:
Once everything has set nicely, the chairs are then drilled with a 1mm drill all the way through to the back of the MDF sheet, then a 2mm drill is used to open out the hole in the chair until it reaches the oak sleeper. There are two holes to each chair. A brass panel pin is then pushed through the hole in the chair and then grips the 1mm hole in the sleeper. Any excess is then cropped off when the section of track is completed. The brass rail is then slid into place, (I use washing up liquid as a lubricant), and the chairs "nipped up" with a pair of pliers. At the end of this I have made 40cm of track....
The completed 91.5cm length is then dunked in Cuprinol overnight!!
Some notes on the construction and design of points / switches / turnouts:
Some suppliers of track work:
Brandbright is <HERE>
Cliff Barker is <HERE>
GRS is <HERE>
The Gauge ‘3’ Society Shop is <HERE>
Tenmille is <HERE>
Well a few months have passed since I entered anything onto here so I suppose I had better add some more to it.
I plan to have two sidings on my track -one for the loco to be assembled on and another for the loco to be dis-assembled on! I looked around at the various options . Robin Saxton makes point and track work that is like an artform -his prices were not unreasonable -but to be honest it was my own despair at looking at my own humble efforts that made me walk away.... The plans from Chris Barron were very good and quite reasonably priced -but I thought that I really wanted a kit of parts for this as I would not be making that many. So, I asked Cliff Barker for a quote and I sent him a cheque. After due delivery I set to work on the bags of bits that I had ordered.
These consisted of a points kit in ABS, a points throw lever and a set of points blades. I did request a frog but they were not available. Now if you sit a few loco makers down -the one thing they get paranoid about are frogs... Some of you may have noticed that the “Heraldic Beast” on the crest of the Cabbage Patch Railway is a winged frog. As in, Wing, Frog, and Rails... (Well I thought it was very funny at the time!!!) The Gauge ‘3’ Society sell a filing gauge that can be used to make frogs from, but my method is far cheaper and (typically enough) -is a cheat.
As I am very lazy the smallest thing in the collection of bits was the first to be assembled. This was the points lever. This comes as a lost wax casting on a sprue -you have to hacksaw the bits apart. You can see the base of the lever in the jaws of the vise.
Once de-flashed and cleaned up with a file and emery you get something that looks like this.
The simple flip flop action holds the point blades against the rails. The casting is of very high quality and is actually quite fun to play with!
The next item out of the bags were the points blades. This is again a lost wax casting -the advise is to “snap off” the sprue and this it did quite easily.
The brass is quite soft and it distorts in the packaging -the advise is to gently flatten out the blades and rails. I used a sheet of glass and the instructions as a “feeler gauge” to find where the lumps and bumps were. It is not a hard job -you do have to hit it “politely” though....
The holes are drilled to 2mm and the pivot point on the blades to 3mm. I only use Metric as Imperial, BA and ME are now becoming hard to find.
The rod work, (as such), to connect the throw to the blades is made from two 3mm electrical loop connectors, (commonly used in my pantograph manufacture), around a short length of tube. There is enough “play” in the length of brass rod to cope with the variation in horizontal movement of the lever as it travels in its arc.
The next part was the one I dreaded... The plans for the 4.5m radius points specify a frog angle of 10.4 degrees. I had to ask myself “Can I machine or cut to this angle?” -the answer I came back with was; “Can I monkeys...”
So, I folded a piece of paper along the plans -this gave me the angle. From this then I cut TWO pieces of brass plate. I now had a set square!!! By putting the set square against the rail I could mark off the angle on the rail and grind it to that line. To make sure I then wedged the set square into the gap and silver soldered it into place and then sealed the ends with more silver solder. To be honest it was actually very easy!!! There was some slight correction required as the heat had warped the ends of the rail but nothing that a polite tap with a hammer corrected.
SO, with the main hurdle leaped I then played “Superman” and bent the rails to shape and chopped them to length. Here they are placed on the sleepers overlaying the plans. I am going to need a bottle of “plumbing weld” and a length of fibreboard to assemble the bits together. It has taken me two afternoons to get this far and “now that I know what I am doing” I think the next set I could do in the one afternoon.
This shows the results of a sticky Sunday mornings work... The sleeper lengths have been nailed to the wood and the spacer ribs stuck to their neighbour using Marley pipe solvent weld from B&Q. This was applied using a paint brush from the tube to the faces to be welded together. The stuff is very gloopy and smells of Methyl Ethyl Ketone -keep the windows open and no naked lights please!!! All the chairs are slid onto the length of rail, make sure you have them in the right order, check and check again -no pun intended!!! The chair is positioned to the right of the sleepers and the gloop painted over the area required -then the chair slid into the pool of gloop and pressed home solidly. Count to twenty SLOWLY and let go -it then never moves again....
The picture below shows the finished set of points with one of my son’s set of Hornby OO points (16.5mm gauge) for comparison
I left this to set solid over a couple of days and then pulled the pins holding all the sleepers in place. A side tug and the plan was persuaded to peel off the points. The last job was to file down the rails to take the blades smoothly into them. This took less than a quarter of an hour and you cannot tell by looking at them that there is a slight lip to them for smooth running.
Constructing my own set of points turned out (!) to be far easier than I had envisaged. I have another right hand to build and a final left hand -then I will be finished. Have a go yourself and don’t be frightened to get your fingers stuck to what you are building...