Well, I must admit to having not heard of wiring the check rails before, but taking the belt and braces approach it will only take a little bit of effort to put some wire across. I was a little sceptical of Martin's comments about bolt holes in the end of check rails but having been up to Ramsbottom this afternoon to photograph the rail anchor bolts (exciting eh?) two of the three turnouts that I could see had check rails with bolt holes in them.

Firstly an outside view of the anchor bolts

Rail anchor bolts at Ramsbottom

It turns out that these 'side' bolts are all over the turnouts as shown in this side shot of the checkrails and crossing vee

So it looks like I'll need to find a way of producing them, first thoughts are resin casting.

And now those check rail holes

Anybody know what the dimensions are? I would guess 1" holes 2" from the end and then a further four inches.

1. for 60ft bullhead rails:

 

Hole diameter is 1.1/8" (1.125").

 

(Fish-bolt diameter is 15/16" (0.938"). The clearance in the hole allows for movement between rail and fishplate due to thermal expansion of the rail.)

 

1st hole is 2.3/8" (2.375") from the rail end. (The middle holes in the fishplate are 5" apart, so this allows for 1/4" expansion gap when the fish-bolt is central in the hole.)

 

2nd hole is 4.1/2" (4.5") from the 1st hole for bullhead rail.

 

Fishplates are 18" long for bullhead.

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2. for 60ft flat-bottom rails:

 

Hole diameter is 1.3/16" (1.188").

 

(Fish-bolt diameter is 1")

 

1st hole is 2.3/8" (2.375") from the rail end. (The middle holes in the fishplate are 5" apart, so this allows for 1/4" expansion gap when the fish-bolt is central in the hole.)

 

2nd hole is 5" from the 1st hole for flat-bottom rail.

 

Fishplates are 20" long for flat-bottom.

 

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The dimensions for older or shorter or pre-grouping rails may differ.

Actual modelling not an awful lot of progress this weekend. I've redrawn the tandem turnout for the third time and I'm finally happy with where everything now fits. This and the B8 that fits toe to toe with it have now been laid out and all of the sleepers cut and prepared - I suppose that is quite a bit of work in itself. I've started on the common crossing but couldn't get it together correctly last night so gave it up to try again when I wasn't so tired.

One thing that had puzzled me was that the Exactoscale templates show the break between the wing rail and the closure rail between the fourth and fifth chair whereas Templot shows it as between the third and fourth - which was right? I could just make out from photographs in books that it looked as though Martin was correct and having looked at the examples at Ramsbottom today these backed that up, but why do Exactoscale show it between the next sleepers?

I raised this when the Exactoscale kits were first released and there was some (heated) discussion about it on E4um. The plain fact is that the Exactoscale/S4 Society templates (and the P4 Track Co kits) are just plain wrong in this respect for the vast majority of REA bullhead crossings. It's possible to argue that they match former GER practice, possibly perpetuated in the southern section of the LNER, but it's pushing things a bit.

 

Andrew Jukes of Exactoscale says they were fully aware of this discrepancy, and did it intentionally for manufacturing reasons to achieve a robust crossing. Which is fair enough for a commercial product, but it should have been made clear that it was non-prototypical. Dotted marks showing the correct arrangement could have been added to the templates. Instead the templates and kits have been published as if they are 100% correct, confusing the majority of modellers for years to come. So much for "getting it all right"!

 

Anyone who knows anything about track can spot immediately that the fishplates and closed-up timbers are 10mm out of position -- which is rather more than the difference between 16.5mm and 18.83mm! What Exactoscale do is clearly up to them, but I don't think the S4 Society should be publishing these same templates without some note that they are incorrect in this respect.

 

Here's a standard REA crossing, showing the wing rail front spanning 3 timbers:

Wing Rail Length

Also no sign of scrape marks on the check rails.

Andy G