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9 minutes ago, njee20 said:

You’d almost certainly melt the adjacent timbers. 
 

I keep wanting to try this for FB turnouts in N. I fear anything that retained the rails would just be too fragile though. 

 

Not if you're quick with the soldering iron.

 

For N you could just drop the rails into slots and attach them with some CA. (Super glue)

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22 minutes ago, AndyID said:

 

Not if you're quick with the soldering iron.

 

For N you could just drop the rails into slots and attach them with some CA. (Super glue)

With flat bottom rail you’d have big slots though. I don’t think it needs scale clips or anything (obviously, they’d be ridiculous), but something like a BH chair to hold the rail.  

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1 minute ago, njee20 said:

With flat bottom rail you’d have big slots though. I don’t think it needs scale clips or anything (obviously, they’d be ridiculous), but something like a BH chair to hold the rail.  

 

Other than a single Atlas train-set that was a present I received thirty years ago I don't know much about N. What are the rail and wheel profiles?

 

The "clips" on the last pic I posted are quite low profile. They come up 0.9mm from the rail's bottom surface. Would that  work with N or is it still too high?

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Code 40 is the norm, so rail height is just over 1mm. I’ll have a look at it sometime, flanges do vary, they’re pretty fine these days, but proportionally not quite as fine as OO I’d guess, if that makes sense! Obviously it’s the inside edge where you’d need very low profile ‘clips’. 

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16 hours ago, njee20 said:

With flat bottom rail you’d have big slots though. I don’t think it needs scale clips or anything (obviously, they’d be ridiculous), but something like a BH chair to hold the rail.  

 

 

 

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Scale base plates, etc.,  for Code 40 N FB have been around for at least a decade. They are part of my range of SIG supplied inexpensive, accurate, scale  and 100% working "daft ideas" and "ridiculous" impossibilities. But then just opinions never made anything. 

 

Andy

 

 

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48 minutes ago, Grovenor said:

Trouble is that simple baseplates and spikes are very rare in the UK prototype so it only suits a very limited time period in the 1940s.

 

Absolutely.  I was just pointing out the practicality of producing similar items, and secure rail fixings, even in the smallest scales. Pandrol clip versions are on my to do list, for HO at least, if I live that long, of course. :o  

 

Andy

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Please read my post Andy. I'm talking about 3D printing them as an integral part of the base. I know that there are fixtures for code 40 rail, but not for the use case I'm talking about. If you can 3D print scale pandrol clips that would be great. Until then though it's not an overly useful contribution, thanks!

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23 hours ago, AndyID said:

The "clips" on the last pic I posted are quite low profile. They come up 0.9mm from the rail's bottom surface. Would that  work with N or is it still too high?

 

Hi Andy,

 

Is this helpful? It all pre-dates the invention of the Pandrol clip.

 

2_261732_250000000.png


2_261732_250000001.png


2_261732_250000002.png

 

cheers,

 

Martin.

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7 hours ago, njee20 said:

Please read my post Andy. I'm talking about 3D printing them as an integral part of the base. I know that there are fixtures for code 40 rail, but not for the use case I'm talking about. If you can 3D print scale pandrol clips that would be great. Until then though it's not an overly useful contribution, thanks!

 

I'm sorry, I was already thinking to the next step. If you print them integrally, then you will end up feeding the rail in endways. Apart from the issue of near scale clips standing up to the feeding through forces involved, you have the other problem there is no way to feed through rail that has bends at both ends.  You need to make other arrangements for check rails and wing rails. The Recreation 21 street track has that issue on their turnouts. 

 

spacer.png

 

My colleague at Central Valley has done that in injection moulded bases for both HO and N, but except for straight track sections, leaves the bases open for drop in rail instead. Of course his injection moulding has a much higher resolution that 3 D printing, but you should check his site for practical ideas. 

 

Andy

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2 hours ago, Andy Reichert said:

 

Of course his injection moulding has a much higher resolution that 3 D printing, but you should check his site for practical ideas. 

 

I'm sure it does so why don't you start a thread about that instead of continually trying to drag this one into the weeds?

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On 26/05/2020 at 14:39, martin_wynne said:

 

Hi Andy,

 

Is this helpful? It all pre-dates the invention of the Pandrol clip.

 

2_261732_250000000.png


2_261732_250000001.png


2_261732_250000002.png

 

cheers,

 

Martin.

 

Hi Martin,

 

Thanks for that.

 

I suspect in the smaller scales printing any clip detail with FDM is not very practical. Something like the Hey-back plates (above) or Pandrol 3-bolt plates with a slight overlap on the bottom flange is probably about as good as it's going to get. In O it might be possible to do better.

 

Cheers

Andy

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On 26/05/2020 at 13:51, njee20 said:

Please read my post Andy. I'm talking about 3D printing them as an integral part of the base. I know that there are fixtures for code 40 rail, but not for the use case I'm talking about. If you can 3D print scale pandrol clips that would be great. Until then though it's not an overly useful contribution, thanks!

 

Hi,

 

Printing Pandrol clips at any scale would be extremely difficult.

 

And even if it was possible, at 2mm/ft I'm not sure I'd be able to tell if they were actually there or not. With the smallest nozzle diameter it should be possible to print reasonable facsimiles of the baseplates and screws and leave the actual clips to the imagination.

 

Cheers,

Andy

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Most of the FB bits for turnouts are quite straightforward - in some respects quite a lot simpler than bullhead. At OO scale all the models need are the jaws to hold the rail superimposed on some sort of baseplate. The printing software happily combines them into a single solid combined with the timber.

 

The bits I'm pondering about are the check rails. On the real thing their bases are machined so that they can be distanced correctly from the running rail. On the model, without machining, there isn't enough room for means to support both the running rail and the check rail.

 

I can either machine (file) the check rails or stop messing about and just print the check rails along with the timbers etc. I'll probably try printing them first. Why buy a dog and bark yourself?

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7 hours ago, AndyID said:

 

Hi,

 

Printing Pandrol clips at any scale would be extremely difficult.

 

And even if it was possible, at 2mm/ft I'm not sure I'd be able to tell if they were actually there or not. With the smallest nozzle diameter it should be possible to print reasonable facsimiles of the baseplates and screws and leave the actual clips to the imagination.

Agreed, and that was my intention, I just bristled slightly at Andy R’s totally unrelated suggestion :)

 

I’ve got resin printers FWIW, so resolution isn’t the limitation, there is no nozzle, but I can’t see anything approaching scale to be strong enough, and suddenly ripping out a chunk of rail on a ballasted turnout would be rather frustrating! I just want to try some sort of mechanical retention system, a chair type design would be fine (even if not totally prototypical). The attraction for me of handbuilt track is the large flowing pointwork formations, rather than utter fidelity; it’ll be on a moderately large N gauge layout, so doesn’t need to stand up to microscopic scrutiny!

 

Ironically the check rail issue may be less pronounced in N, as flangeway gaps are wider proportionally than 4mm, but the rail is smaller. Particularly with modern day tapered end check rails. Anyway, sorry, that’s a tangent!

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I think printed check rails are worth investigating, they're never shiny (awaits contradictory photo). Maybe a couple of thou below rail height so any painting survives cleaning. 

Alan 

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1 hour ago, njee20 said:

Agreed, and that was my intention, I just bristled slightly at Andy R’s totally unrelated suggestion :)

 

I’ve got resin printers FWIW, so resolution isn’t the limitation, there is no nozzle, but I can’t see anything approaching scale to be strong enough, and suddenly ripping out a chunk of rail on a ballasted turnout would be rather frustrating! I just want to try some sort of mechanical retention system, a chair type design would be fine (even if not totally prototypical). The attraction for me of handbuilt track is the large flowing pointwork formations, rather than utter fidelity; it’ll be on a moderately large N gauge layout, so doesn’t need to stand up to microscopic scrutiny!

 

Ironically the check rail issue may be less pronounced in N, as flangeway gaps are wider proportionally than 4mm, but the rail is smaller. Particularly with modern day tapered end check rails. Anyway, sorry, that’s a tangent!

 

The Manchester Model railway club has a very extensive description of various fixings some looking reasonably substantial, you might find something appropriate there

 

C&L manage to do ST baseplates, as well as Pandrol Peco also do another (generic?) type with its sleeper pack

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2 hours ago, Buhar said:

I think printed check rails are worth investigating, they're never shiny (awaits contradictory photo). Maybe a couple of thou below rail height so any painting survives cleaning. 

Alan 

I actually did that when I did a bit of a test print ages ago, and it did work alright.

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I was interested to see just how small I could print jaws that properly grip FB rail. Turns out they are a lot smaller than I thought they could be. I'll try to find out where the limits are.

 

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This might be approaching the practical minimum. The "clips" have a sort of dovetail profile to accept the rail bottom. They project 0.45mm above the rails' bottom surface. I'll probably go with 0.55mm to make them a bit more robust but these do actually grip the rail quite well.

 

In terrifying close-up.  (I left the Mk1 thumb in the pic for reference.)

 

DSCN4862.JPG.139be8c5ffa0170806b81f81405e23cd.JPG

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13 hours ago, AndyID said:

This might be approaching the practical minimum. The "clips" have a sort of dovetail profile to accept the rail bottom. They project 0.45mm above the rails' bottom surface. I'll probably go with 0.55mm to make them a bit more robust but these do actually grip the rail quite well.

 

In terrifying close-up.  (I left the Mk1 thumb in the pic for reference.)

 

DSCN4862.JPG.139be8c5ffa0170806b81f81405e23cd.JPG

That's looking great Andy. With all the Covid19 shortages I may have to print my own turnouts. Simon

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22 minutes ago, Trog said:

The BR3 might be a suitable early FB plain line baseplate to model, as it has a jaw on one side of the rail and an up stand where the elastic spikes fit on the other.

 

Photos of BR baseplates on Colin Craig's page, BR3 is Photo5:

 

http://www.mmrs.co.uk/technical-articles/modern-permanent-way/

 

Photo5-BR3-baseplate-track-Bournemouth-2

BR3 photo linked from above page

 

Martin.

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