Can you 'rethread' Peco rail onto sleeper base?

[PhilH]

Morning...the roundyroundy in the loft is no more. Too hot, too cold, too isolated, bad initial design all conspired to hasten its demise. Having built up a nice selection of locos and stock over the years I intend to build a much less ambitious layout in my spare bedroom. 

I've invested quite heavily in it over the years so would like the new one to be relatively cost neutral so would like to reuse the Peco Code 75 track. However when recovering it I'm finding that the rail is separating from the sleeper base in places. Is it possible to rethread the rail onto the base, if anyone has successfully done this is there a method in doing so?

Thanks for any replies.

 

 

Edited March 9, 2019 by PhilH
Grammar

[MartynJPearson]

My experience of code 100 peco track is yes, you can. Bear in mind though that where the rail and base have parted company, the chairs on the plastic base may have bent / deformed / broken off, so check first.The odd one or two may not be an issue but there might be potential for the track to go out of gauge if there is a long run of broken chairs.

 

The other thing to make sure of is that the end of the rail is perfectly clean, i.e. no burrs. There isn't a lot of clearance so these could catch quite easily, making it hard to rethread the rail without damaging the chairs.

[Fat Controller]

Firstly, identify why the rail has pulled out of the fixings.

Remove all sleepers with damaged fixings, but don't discard; they come in handy for putting under joints. 

When re-threading, do short lengths of sleepers at a time, and do one rail first. 

I've recovered and rethreaded some track several times when I dismantled my garden railway to move house; most was reused, probably about 80%.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

'How is the track fixed down?' strikes me as the heart of the problem. Can you find a technique for detaching track from support that sacrifices the support? (I would also focus on points recovery, as these are roughly 10x the cost of plain track by a length comparison.)

 

In case it is useful,l I assisted once in a large volume of Peco OO track recovery, where the track had been pinned down with steel track pins in a humid location and the corrosion left the pins bonded to the support. Grinding off the head of the pins with a small grindstone in a rotary tool was the winning technique, often with some slight damage to the sleeper but the track came up functionally undamaged.

 

Repair for the damaged chairs, a few brass pins into the chair holes where the chairs are broken, solder the rail on. Works well in the middle of a length of flexi. Appearance not as good, so I do this for off scene redeployed track where the only requirement is reliable running.

[GeoffAlan]

I've done it with N gauge code 80. Wet the whole thing under the tap as a lubricant.

[DCB]

  I do this all the time with Peco code 100 flexi, and set track as well as Hornby and Grafar code 100  flexi and have done the same with Peco N gauge flexi track and Triang Super 4.   However Hornby set track just disintegrates  if you try dismantling it.

Make sure the rail ends don't have any burrs or sharp edges on the ends or blobs of solder (or glue. cement, / paint)  to catch the rail chairs and slide the sleepers along the rail.  If there are solder blobs part way cut the sleeper webs and slide the sleepers away.  If multiple blobs cut the rails with a dremel  / hacksaw etc and save the sleepers.

If a few sleepers are broken, or just one where it was pinned  I cut the webs between the good ones and the duff ones and  slide the good ones up.  Cutting the webs to allow twenty or a dozen sleepers to slide at a time makes life easier some times.  When all the sleepers are snuggled up I slide more sleepers on to make up the length.     

I go a step further when laying short rails to fill in gaps in pointwork etc as I take lengths of rail and cut them to length  and then slide the sleepers on one by one so they can be moved back when the fishplates are fitted.   I have a pile of recovered sleepers and recovered rail which I use for this.

Care with recovering the track avoids much of this issue,  A sharp kitchen knife (Chefs) to get under the sleepers where its ballasted can be useful, but a bit dodgy if its stuck in your belt on the tube en route on club night.

[PhilH]

Thank you for the encouraging replies. Luckily the points and slips seem to be coming up unscathed which is a bonus, I shall carry on with the retrieval and be as careful as I can, as I said above this layout is nowhere near as ambitious as the loft layout so only need to reuse a maximum of about 60% of the track.

 

Thanks again.

[Oldddudders]

I ordered a quantity of Peco HOm track by mail-order from the UK. Not enough, it seems, to have held itself together against vengeful post persons, and an interesting hour was spent re-threading the sleeper bases on about 6 yard lengths. But all was saved. I now buy over the counter from Kernow (and it wasn’t their mail-order but an ebay supplier) and carry it to Sherry’s flat for eventual transport here by road!

[Pacific231G]

I've done rethreading quite often with code 100, mostly in the course of widening the sleeper spacing to something less main line (in HO),  and I think the sleeper bases are the same for code 75 it's just the rail that's different on plain track. However the rail hadn't pulled away from the web. I did have some Peco N gauge track that had been stored in a damp garage for some years  and when I took it out with a view to passing it on found that the sleepers and particilarly the "chairs" had become very brittle and the rail simply pulled away leaving a shower of broken chairs so look carefully at the state of the sleepers.

 

When rethreading it is important to take a file to the rail end to make sure the sleepers will slip on easily without damaging the chairs and cut the the web down to bite sized chunks rather than trying to rethread a long section at a time- you'll inevitably find one of two where the rail  isn't threaded properly and sod's law guarantees that'll be in the middle of a section. You can either keep the web intact over half a dozen or so sleepers to keep the gauge or just use a track gauge. I definitely concurr with David about very short sections of track. It's far easier to get the rails to the right length and then rethread the sleepers than to try and cut very short sections of assembled track with the web as well.

 

Peco track is to scale in H0 for mainline sleepering at 60cm centres but that's a closer spacing than most British track and even more so in OO. So, if you have to rethread the sleepers anyway,  you might consider respacing them. I made a simple jig for that but I've seen etched jigs  to make panels of track with every sleepers correctly spaced for individual railway companies. 

 

There was an article in Loco-Revue a few years ago about making Peco code 75 track "hyper realistic" (the actual sleepers are to scale for European, including British, railways in H0 though too wide for American ties)  and that involved unthreading the rails, separating the base  into individual.sleepers, distressing them and then carefully rethreading them onto the rail at an appropriate spacing. The results looked good and rethreading was clearly possible but I did wonder whether simply hand building the track using copper clad strip and solder might have been easier. 

Edited March 9, 2019 by Pacific231G

[Silver Sidelines]

Yes Code 100 but not quite the question.  Code 75 is more friendly and there might be a case for handbuilding on copper clad sleepers - something I did quite successfully many years ago.

38 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

.. The results looked good and rethreading was clearly possible but I did wonder whether simply hand building the track using copper clad strip and solder might have been easier. 

 

Ray

[Pacific231G]

4 hours ago, Silver Sidelines said:

Yes Code 100 but not quite the question.  Code 75 is more friendly and there might be a case for handbuilding on copper clad sleepers - something I did quite successfully many years ago.

 

Ray

Hi Ray

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I was seeing handbuilding in comparison to the rather extreme kitbashing advocated by Loco Revue not in comparison to simple rethreading bit it was the fact that their approach involves rethreading individual  sleepers that demonstrates that it can be done .

 

Given that the moulded base is the same there shouldn't be any real difference between rethreading code 100 and code 75 onto those sleepers, apart from taking particular care to not kink the rail, but as I have (so far) only done it with code 100 I didn't want to claim personal experience of code 75. 

[Silver Sidelines]

Thanks David

 

57 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

..Sorry if I wasn't clear.

 

I have been using Code 100 for ever.  The rail section is very heavy and below 30 inch radius with time the foot of the rail cuts into the plastic track base and wipes out the chairs.  Over the years I have had to cut out sections of sleeper base where the flat bottom rail has cut through the chairs.  My solution re-thread the track with some new plastic base. (This is made easier if you give the foot of the rail a few rubs with a file.)

 

Long ago before I went down the Peco Streamline route I bought some code 75? bulhead rail which I soldered to copper clad sleepers.  I had a couple of brass roller gauges and it was straightforward.  At the time I used Formoway points - but sadly these were not up to the task.

 

My present layout is ballasted with poppy seeds stuck together with  wallpaper paste.  It was laid mostly in 2007 but not ballasted until 2011.  It has had minimal maintenance but if I need to lift the track - the ballast will just wash off!

 

Cheers  Ray

[kevinlms]

15 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

Hi Ray

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I was seeing handbuilding in comparison to the rather extreme kitbashing advocated by Loco Revue not in comparison to simple rethreading bit it was the fact that their approach involves rethreading individual  sleepers that demonstrates that it can be done .

 

Given that the moulded base is the same there shouldn't be any real difference between rethreading code 100 and code 75 onto those sleepers, apart from taking particular care to not kink the rail, but as I have (so far) only done it with code 100 I didn't want to claim personal experience of code 75. 

Is the code 100 base the same as code 75? Somehow I doubt it.

[Silver Sidelines]

8 hours ago, kevinlms said:

Is the code 100 base the same as code 75? Somehow I doubt it.

Like you ...I doubt it.  Code 75 rail is far nicer to handle but then perhaps it kinks more easily than Code 100.

 

Ray

[eastglosmog]

I have both (Code 100 in hidden sidings, Code 75 in visible part) and the bases certainly look very similar.  Same height sleepers and chairs.

[Pacific231G]

3 hours ago, eastglosmog said:

I have both (Code 100 in hidden sidings, Code 75 in visible part) and the bases certainly look very similar.  Same height sleepers and chairs.

I've just checked and, though the basic sleeper moulding is identical,  the chairs that hold the web of the FB rail  (they're not really chairs but neither are they spikes, pandrol clips nor fang bolts; but a sort of claw so "chairs" will probably have to do) are somewhat finer for code 75. The Code 75 rail on my test track has a somewhat narrower web than the code 100 so if you thread code 75 rail onto a code 100  sleeper web it is very loose in the "chairs", Clearly you can rethread code 75 rail onto its sleepers but it needs greater care than with code 100.  There are though changes in Peco specs over time so I'll try to find code 75 and code 100 track from the same period.

Edited March 10, 2019 by Pacific231G

[kevinlms]

2 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

I've just checked and, though the basic sleeper moulding is identical,  the chairs that hold the web of the FB rail  (they're not really chairs but neither are they spikes, pandrol clips nor fang bolts; but a sort of claw so "chairs" will probably have to do) are somewhat finer for code 75. The Code 75 rail on my test track has a somewhat narrower web than the code 100 so if you thread code 75 rail onto a code 100  sleeper web it is very loose in the "chairs", Clearly you can rethread code 75 rail onto its sleepers but it needs greater care than with code 100.  There are though changes in Peco specs over time so I'll try to find code 75 and code 100 track from the same period.

According to this chart

 

http://fast-tracks.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=840

 

the Peco code 75 is obviously shorter than code 100, but also narrower and the foot is smaller too.

So while the bases may look similar, they can't be, unless the code 75 is very loose in the base.

Almost certainly the 'not quite chairs' are different.

[eastglosmog]

Having found a few offcuts buried deep in the spares box, the "chairs" are slightly different.  Code 100 will only fit in the Code 75 sleeper base if the latter is badly battered about the chairs. 

[BoD]

On 9 March 2019 at 11:31, PhilH said:

Thank you for the encouraging replies. Luckily the points and slips seem to be coming up unscathed which is a bonus, I shall carry on with the retrieval and be as careful as I can, as I said above this layout is nowhere near as ambitious as the loft layout so only need to reuse a maximum of about 60% of the track.

 

Thanks again.

 

Huh, bodging again.

[Pacific231G]

18 hours ago, kevinlms said:

According to this chart

 

http://fast-tracks.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=840

 

the Peco code 75 is obviously shorter than code 100, but also narrower and the foot is smaller too.

So while the bases may look similar, they can't be, unless the code 75 is very loose in the base.

Almost certainly the 'not quite chairs' are different.

Hi Kevin 

That agrees with what I found when I looked more closely at both and was different from what I'd previously thought. I assume that it was easier for Peco's toolmakers to just change the rail fixings than to rework the whole sleeper web moulding. 

[PhilH]

17 hours ago, BoD said:

 

Huh, bodging again.

 

Always, allways...

Edited March 12, 2019 by PhilH

[Mike Storey]

I have rarely needed to re-thread Code 75 track, but when doing so, I agree with all of the points made above.

 

But one trick that also makes it easier, is to spray WD40 on to the rails before threading. I have to re-thread my garden railway Code 200 track regularly during construction (as that is the only way to bend the rails without a very expensive gadget), and since using WD40, it has become much, much easier.

 

Using short lengths of web and filing the ends of the rail slightly are the other two key necessities (assuming all the moulded chairs are in a good state). If both rails need re-threading, then I have found it easiest to re-thread them as a pair, a few short web lengths at a time, rather than threading one, then the other. If only one side has come out, then you need to see if the displaced rail will go back in without major force - if not, then take out the other rail, and do as above.

 

 

[Joseph_Pestell]

Agree with all the above comments. But would also suggest that you make up a jig to hold the sleeperbase in place while you rethread the rail. Much easier as I found out when making up lengths of fiNetrax.

[Colin]

At the risk of appearing unduly pessimistic, I would definitely check all points/crossings/slips for twisting - I found out to my cost that you have to be very careful when lifting them, especially the finer Code 75 which are more delicate than Code 100. I reused some points and a slip only to find that barely noticeable twisting of the entire units was causing poor running, especially with shorter wheelbase locos. 

[PhilH]

Thanks again for the helpful replies...as regards the points and slips they appear to have lifted ok, seem flat enough. If they are not reusable then that would signal the end of the project as I'm not going to fork out for new ones. A few lengths of track if necessary is one thing but up to 20 or so points and slips is a different kettle of fish.

 

Just as an aside I think the planned way of operating them may be unusual...I have a few kg of 1.6 mm dia 600mm long silver solder rods which I am going to use to throw the points running in wood block bearings. Polarity switching will be achieved using mini lever switches bought many years ago. The value of the rods used will probably be worth more than the rest of the layout.

 

Bodge? Me?...

Edited March 12, 2019 by PhilH