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Tri-ang 00 standard track


Silverfox17
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Here are the 4 main differences with standard track points. The right hand two are the original style and made with cellulose acetate.  These have the best frog/blade mechanism but unfortunately the plastic can distort quite badly.  I do have a few fairly flat ones that I have regauged and seem okay but the roll over handles are prone to breaking.  These have a different method of powering the two exit lines.  An electric version of this point was made briefly that had a different base appearance but I have not seen one.  The 2nd from the left is the later polystyrene one with a sliding lever and diecast "blade" section and the left hand one is the last design using the series 3 track blades.  This looks the best but is more prone to lost power connection between stock rails and blades, and, has a plastic frog which is not as good as the others.  It does have a slightly different operating mechanism to the first slide bar points.  The 2nd from the left was the most erratic for power supply as both the front end and rear end were prone to not making contact with the respective clips.  The brass operating design was copied and used on the TT type A track points although the brass plate was operated by lever with an arc movement. 

 

Initially the points had a steel base plate which was later changed to aluminium for cost.  The aluminium was initially flat then had two ribs put in for strength.

 

Garry

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Edited by Silverfox17
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Of hand, I think that the second from the right is the first design, with the moving brass contact.
 

The wired one, extreme right, has a brass plate to tension the operating lever linkage.

 

This would come after the moving contact point.

 

I am certain that an early electric point is in our collection. The base is different from the hand operated points, and has no hand operating lever.

 

The original hand operated points could not be converted to electric operation.

 

The later sliding lever points could have a solenoid assembly added into the recess, and connected to the brass slider via the round pin on the end.

 

 

Edited by Sarahagain
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The photo was not supposed to have been in any order but I agree with what you say Sarah.

 

Here is a solenoid fitted to one of the slide switch points.  Very easy to fit and held in by the base plate with the top having 3 short projections to fit in slots in the base, the protrusions just fit in and are too small to fold over.

 

I had hoped the series 3 motors could be fitted but they are 1) a lot shorter so the protrusions do not fit the slots, 2) thinner so the operating lever does not line up, 3) the operating lever slot is different size to the standard point brass plate.  Therefore I am unlikely to get all electric points by just buying any solenoids.

 

Garry 

 

 

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I think the idea of the "solid" clip moulding only being done with polystyrene bases has gone out of the window.  This shows the bases have shrunk leaving gaps between them.  Once the ends are trimmed they will still be okay to use though. 

 

Also 3 different types of suppressors fitted, the centre one with a flat yellow type also has the word Tri-ang moulded in a different typeface but has still shrunk. This photo shows 3 different moulding of the clips too.

 

Garry

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Edited by Silverfox17
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From what I recall, the yellow flat plate cap came first, then the red ones, then the white ones...later a smaller orange/ yellow disc, and an even smaller square shaped cap was used in locomotives.

 

None of those tongues is the reinforced variety...

 

The really early power connecting tracks do not have a capacitor fitted.

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There were a few different variations in the tools for the track bases.

 

There were modifications as well, for example, the “walls” around the track connexions on the power tracks. These started out as complete walls, then sections were lowered to allow for the connexion of the suppression capacitors.

 

There is quite a lot of information in Pat Hammond’s books, mainly volume 1 for Standard Track.

 

According to volume 1, capacitors on Power Tracks were introduced in 1956, with the yellow rectangle variant.

 

This also states that the white capacitor came before the red one.

This makes sense when looking at the photos above, as the “rib” beside the tongue on the white capacitor track is carried across the tongue on the red capacitor track.

 

For the R.93 curve, six different moulds are identified, with various modifications.

 

For the R.96 Straight, three multi impression moulds are identified, with various modifications. 
 

The R.97 Power Track was also produced from some of the straight track moulds, as well as from a mould that only produced  the Power Tracks.

 

Many variations are identified.

 

The replaceable tongues were introduced on the R.100 Diamond Crossing from late 1955 - early 1956.

 


 

 

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1 hour ago, Sarahagain said:

There is quite a lot of information in Pat Hammond’s books, mainly volume 1 for Standard Track.

I have recently bought this book which is very good and I just wish with all the diferent moulds and mods they had put something like P to denote polystyrene was used. Considering all the times tools were modified it would not have been hard to do, especially as Tri-ang new the issues with CA from early on. 

 

I wish I could get some of the last style of uncoupler for standard track which was similar to the series 3 ones but never ever seen them as they are rare. 

 

Garry 

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AFAIK Tri-ang never admitted there was anything wrong with their choice of plastic, they just quietly changed it. I can recall being told at an early age that Tri-ang warped. It must have been around 1956, as I ignored it and bought a double bolster wagon anyway. It never did warp, so it must have been polystyrene.

 

The flat yellow capacitors are silver mica (a superior type - better than necessary for interference suppression) and the other two are tubular ceramic. Nowadays the latter type is usually found in disc format.

 

Background on radio interference - skip if not interested.

As the pioneer (whatever the Americans claim) of TV, Britain goofed and chose positive modulation (for 405 line TV) with the sync pulse at the lower level of the waveform and peak white at the highest. This coupled with amplitude modulation (AM) of both sound and vision (as it was then - now audio and video using the language of the Romans)  resulted in interference interfering with synchronisation and causing grey/white spots all over the screen and crackles on the sound. The latter also upset radio reception which was also AM. The solution (in part anyway) was to short out the radio frequencies emitted by arcing. Very early radio (wireless* then) spark transmitters generated the signal this way.

The adoption of FM (frequency modulation) for radio  (this took ages) and negative modulation (625 line in the UK) for TV  almost completely eliminated the problem. FM can be clamped in amplitude in the receiver so that interference has no effect and In TV causes black spots which are less noticeable and had to be high amplitude to affect the synchronisation. (In any cases spots on the picture are preferable to the picture breaking up. The use of UHF rather than VHF helped too. Digital transmissions are almost immune once the signal strength is high enough for reception. The downside is that reception fails completely below a certain signal level - even poor reception is better than nothing at all.

* From wireless telegraphy and telephony  (Greek this time - we love our archaic languages!). 'Television' is a hybrid of course (IIRC the word 'bastard' (as in illegitimate) was used at the time. Luckily we dropped 'televisor'.

Edited by Il Grifone
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1 hour ago, andyman7 said:

I've never had a problem telling CA and Polystyrene apart - apart from the slightly translucent shiny quality to CA, there is always some distortion because it is such an unstable material.

How do you manage to tell them apart from a photo though? Flash can give anything a shine. 

 

Garry 

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16 minutes ago, Silverfox17 said:

How do you manage to tell them apart from a photo though? Flash can give anything a shine. 

 

Garry 

That's admittedly harder, but CA distorts so you're looking for any sign of a line or curve being pulled out of true. Mould design played a bif part in how destructive the distortion is - the 'banana roofs' of the early Rovex coaches are well known so any straight example is going to be Poly; but I've never known anything CA that didn't have a certain waviness caused by the stress of the material pulling in different directions. If a piece of standard track lays dead flat, I would consider that a good sign that it is Poly.

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1 hour ago, andyman7 said:

That's admittedly harder, but CA distorts so you're looking for any sign of a line or curve being pulled out of true. Mould design played a bif part in how destructive the distortion is - the 'banana roofs' of the early Rovex coaches are well known so any straight example is going to be Poly; but I've never known anything CA that didn't have a certain waviness caused by the stress of the material pulling in different directions. If a piece of standard track lays dead flat, I would consider that a good sign that it is Poly.

I do look for flat items and some people lay the track on a table or something which gives me a good indication but the majority of sellers just pile it up on top of its self which is very hard to spot but I try. I guess some sellers know the issues and will try to hide it the best they can but I have most of what I need thankfully. 

 

Garry 

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Here is what one end of the layout will look like (hopefully).  I need a couple more large radius curves and make a couple of short straights and this should be fine.  The single line is planned to go to a terminus and trains can enter and leave from both inner or outer tracks as there will be a crossover further on from the single point on the outer curve.  This should fit on a 5' x 2' board but the main layout will be only 4' wide. Most likely it will be 13' long to fit what I want on the station boards at the front which will be a 5' and a 4' so the point work will all fit on the 5' board.  There was no way I would be able to have it all on one board, or even two, so looks like 2 x 5' x 2', 2 x 4' x 2' and 2 x 4'6" x 1' for the main layout and hopefully I will have some in store already for the terminus.  I will have to dig out (or buy) some Dublo green switches as I use them as DPDT's for the triangle to either inner or outer lines (the rails will be cut to prevent a short before someone says you cannot do it).

 

Garry

Junction to terminus.JPG

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Somewhere in my 'Black Track Stash' I've got my original points which were the lever type.  The levers broke off quite early on and the period of 'storage' (60+ years!) has resulted in distortion and gauge narrowing.  I'll see if I can find them (or it may be 'it'!).

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Got a small collection of track today and nearly all seems to be polystyrene as there are only about 10 small curves that are out of gauge.  It does mean I don't have to use any of the re-gauged small radius ones. Large radius curves seem a lot harder to come by but at least I do have the 10 good ones I need for the layout now and do have most of what I need for the proposed layout.  

 

Garry

Standard track collection.JPG

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I have been testing the new curves and they work fine but as I cannot put a video on here these are the two trains tested.  The L1 with 3 x 9" coaches in the two different shades of green used and Electra with 7 express coaches made up of 5 x 7" and 2 x 6" coaches.  I don't like the longer scale coaches much preferring the 9" ones but I do think these smaller ones are quaint, especially the blood and custard ones.

 

There is a third Electra awaiting a motor bogie (somewhere stored safely) but this is my original from when it came out that I repainted and relined.  It will have to get fitted with Joueff pantographs though as Tri-ang ones are far too expensive at nearly £50 each.

 

Garry

L1 SR coaches.JPG

Electra 1.JPG

Electra 2.JPG

2 Electras.JPG

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14 minutes ago, 5050 said:

Gary, I've got a complete roof with pantos that I'll never use.  I had no idea that the pantos were selling for so much!  Would you like it?  At a reasonable price of course!

Thanks, can you send me a private message please. 

 

Garry 

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While 'talking' to Gary about the roof I remembered a layout in Railway Modeller, probably very late 50's/very early 60's, that was based on the County Donegal narrow gauge and appeared to use Triang standard track 'buried' in the scenery.  I think the builder took the radical (then anyway) of using a 5mm/foot scale (or thereabouts) for the stock.  I also think I've seen it rebuilt in a later issue of the magazine some years after but still with the 'buried' Triang track.  At the time I thought it was an excellent idea - but then, as a young lad, I was easily impressed!

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I've just found a second box of Standard Track! I'm not sure I can be bothered to sort this as well.

 

Is the ramp of the terminal/uncoupling rail supposed to stay up? There doesn't appear to be any locking mechanism so I assume not.

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16 minutes ago, Il Grifone said:

Is the ramp of the terminal/uncoupling rail supposed to stay up? There doesn't appear to be any locking mechanism so I assume not.

I was wondering the same David.  Some of mine do stay up even with the spring and others are pulled back down by the small spring.

 

Garry

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Regarding the uncoupling ramp in standard track it cannot be left up (when it does stay there) if a loco goes across as it is too high and lifts the loco as it is not sprung loaded.  The later ones in standard track are like the Series 3 version but I have not seen any at all.  I may use some of the Super 4 uncouplers to allow easier shunting.

 

Garry  

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