I'm no expert Rich, but I've just made my first 11 turnouts operational, and with a bit of fiddling they seem to work ok. The homemade TOU was retrofitted after construction, and though your operating system would seem to be wire in tube in routed channels whereas mine uses Cobalt motors fitted below the board, I think there could be some compatibility. My switches have rightangled springy dropper wires soldered along the length of the blades; the solder joint is about 3mm long, so quite strong. The droppers drop into brass tubes attached to a slider bar, and small plastikard wedges stop them slopping about while allowing rotation within the tube. While my tubes extend through the board and attach to a tiebar below the board, it would be possible to use short tubes set in a plastic tiebar in your channel, I'm sure. In fact, with shorter tubes you won't have the problem I had to start with of tubes rocking slightly under load, which I solved with a different method of attaching them to the tiebar. When I build the second board of my layout, I may well use this system myself.

This is my first layout, so my advice may be absolute rubbish; feel free to ignore. Good luck with it anyway!!!

Hi Rich,

I'm not sure if this will work for your loose heels and in such a small space (or even that my slowed mind is actually adressing your problem), but a common method to allow the rotational moment in ply and rivet tiebar joints in 4mm is to use a flat-headed rivet (brass so it acan be soldered) in a close fitting (but clearance hole) in the tiebar (like http://www.newportmrs.com/TFC/Frecclesham/October%202011/Tie%20Bar.jpg - but next scale down from Senior!)

Cheers

Jan

I used the Geoff Jones tiebars too and agree about them working; bet I'm a bigger numpty than you, Nick......

Thank you all. It helps to get people to shout in sometimes to get ideas forming and the brain re-thinking. Sometimes you are so close to a problem there is no wood, or trees.

Pete,

I have wire in tube to toggle switches. I couldn't find a 4PDT slide switch (hindsight knows I could have paired up DPDT in this one instance) and needed one for the end of the loop to meet the electrical wiring criteria.

Jan,

Thank you. I like the idea of a 'rivet' in an inconspicuous tie bar. This would still allow me to feed the switch rails by the fixing medium, and with the rivet under the stock rails the rail height would be maintained. It would actually (for me) work better than the bent wire in tube that others have suggested.