Great to see someone celebrating the satisfaction that comes from building things yourself. May you long continue to enjoy it.

I hadn't realised that any of the Irish 5'3" track was laid with inside keys.

Nick

A very neat piece of trackwork but....

Ummmm, I think that you may have an error. The C&L chairs (assuming that is what they are) are outside keyed track (unless they have a new range that I am not aware of).

If you assemble with keys on the inside you have two problems.

1. the cant (Angle that rail lies) is wrong.

2. The chairs are too high and the wheel flanges will hit them..

I wish that someone did inside key chairs. They were very popular in the 19th Century.

It looks like you are using ply sleepers so it is easy to strip of the chairs (scapel blade underneath) and reuse them.

Don't forget that when laying keyed track to get the keys around the right way. That is that the forces on the rail cause it to creep so that it forces the block into the chair.

Hi Nestor,

Yes, you should check your photos to see if your prototype had inside or outside keys. Outside is by far the more common, but some railways and contractors used inside keys during the later 19th century.

If you do need inside keys then there will always be someone who tells you it can't be done  With all due respect to brightspark, it can be done in P4 but 00 or EM flanges would hit the chairs. See the last couple of comments in this entry on my blog. The track in question is still within P4 tolerances (-0, +0.03mm) after three years.

As to the direction of the keys, see this post.

Nick

I hadn't considered P4.

So tell us, did you want inside keyed track? I just made the assumption.